Problematical Punctuation Marks

Do you ever feel like going out on a limb and using brackets instead of parentheses? Would you know when it is appropriate? What about using a dash instead of a colon or semicolon? Those problematical little punctuation marks can be intimidating, but only because they get so little attention in grade school. We spend a lot of time going over comma rules and rules for colons and semicolons, but we rarely focus on things like brackets, dashes, and hyphens.

In truth, all those little marks are pretty easy to use. For example, dashes are created by typing two hyphens (the minus key on Windows keyboards), and dashes can be used to replace many of the other punctuation marks you already use. Why not branch out the next time you are working on an essay. Read over the rules for the punctuation you normally don't use and try to sprinkle a few into your next paper. It gets easier with practice.