The punctuation of Elizabethan drama was useful, but it _____an important element that had been the making of 12th-century punctuation.

Punctuation in the United States has followed much the same path as in Britain, but the rules laid down by American authorities have in general been more ____than the British rules. In other words, they were fixed.

The colon (:), which was once used like a full point and was followed by an uppercase letter, now serves mainly to _____ the beginning of a list, summary, or quotation.

The end of a grammatically complete sentence is marked by a full point, full stop, or period. The period may also be used to mark ___, such as the “U.S.”

_____punctuation was common in the 18th century: at its worst it used commas with every subordinate clause and separable phrase

Three of its most important ____ are the space left blank between words; the indentation of the first line of a new paragraph; and the uppercase, or capital, letter written at the beginning of a sentence.

But the rules laid down by American _____have in general been more fixed than the British rules. In other words, they were fixed.

______ pieces on punctuation were published by Robert Monteith in 1704 and Joseph Robertson in 1795. They had a huge impact on the way people write.

As the punctuation during that time lacked significant elements, it was not _____ to convey some important aspects of the drama.

Other punctuation marks used in modern English include parentheses, which_____to isolate a word or phrase.

It was Ben Jonson, in his English Grammar, a work ______ about 1617 and published in 1640, who first introduced the use of punctuation in England.

Commas can be used with_____ phrases to divide them in a reasonable manner.

A comma (,) is used to separate the elements of a series to set off or isolate words or phrases, or in _____ with coordinating conjunctions such as “The creature is hideous, but it is intelligent”.