"Publish and prosper" is a series of posts about tips for researchers whose first language is not English but who submit papers to journals published in English. The series touches upon not only writing (spelling, grammar, punctuation, usage, and style) but everything else relevant to publishing research papers that journal editors wish their authors knew.

1. Punctuation: A writer's tool kit

2. Professional writers and copy editors care about punctuation and often discuss the use of specific punctuation marks in detail . At the other extreme are those who know only the most basic uses of punctuation: a comma to separate items in a list, a period to end a sentence, and a question mark to indicate a question. Indeed, the first two stops or marks typically account for at least 90% of all the punctuation marks used in texts . However, if you care about writing effectively, you need to pay as much attention to the use of punctuation as you do to the use of words.

3. Some believe that punctuation is meant to help in reading aloud ; a comma , for example, indicates a small pause ; a semicolon , a longer pause ; and the full stop , an even longer pause . However, research papers are seldom read aloud, and we should think of punctuation as a set of useful tools that help in constructing sentences. More specifically, punctuation indicates how different parts of a sentence are connected and also, like signposts, tell readers what is coming up next.

4. A colon , for example, tells readers to expect something more on the same topic. That ‘something more' may be an example or two, an explanation, a definition, or even a contrast. Quotation marks or quotes indicate that the exact words of a speaker or from a source have been reproduced instead of paraphrasing them, and a pair of dashes suggests - as in this contrived example - that the text thus enclosed is incidental or secondary to the main sentence .

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