Question

Punctuate the following sentence.
when I went fishing I caught an old shoe a plastic bag and a bad cold

Answer 1

Hint: Punctuation means the right use of the stops in a sentence. Punctuation marks can often alter the meaning of a sentence. The use of capital letters as a type of punctuation is called capitalization. Capitalization is significant as it shows readers the importance of specific words and indicates changes in certain meanings.

Complete answer:
The principal Punctuation marks are:
Full Stop or Period (.) – It represents the longest pause and is used at the end of an Assertive or Imperative sentence. And after abbreviations and initials.

The comma (,) – It marks the shortest pause and is used to separate three or more words of the same part of speech (nouns, verbs, adjectives and adverbs), to mark off phrases in apposition, to mark off the nominative of address, after adverbial phrases formed by absolute construction, before and after an adjectival phrase formed with a participle (provided it is a non-defining phrase), to separate words, phrases or clauses inserted into the body of a sentence, to avoid the repetition of a verb, to separate a Subordinate Clause of any sort that comes before the Principal Clause and to separate short Co-ordinate
Clauses of a Compound Sentence.

The semicolon (;) – It marks a longer pause than the Comma and is used to separate the clauses of a Compound Sentence, when they contain a comma and to separate sentences that are closely connected in thought, where a full stop would be too complete a break.

Colon (:) – It marks a more complete pause than that indicated by the Semicolon and is used to introduce a quotation, to introduce a list and to introduce an explanation, a statement or a proposition.

Interrogation Mark (?) – It is used after a direct question.

Exclamation Mark (!) - It should be used only after real exclamations or interjections, and phrases and sentences expressing sudden emotion or wish.

Inverted Commas or Quotation Marks (‘ ‘) – They are used to indicate Direct Speech.
Capital Letters are used at the beginning of a sentence, each line of poetry, names of people, places, mountains, rivers, nations and adjectives of nationality, days, months, festivals, historical eras, books, plays, works of art, all adjectives derived from Proper Nouns, all Nouns and Pronouns which stand for God, titles of people and names of things, when we refer to unique examples.

Using the above points, the correct answer for the given question is:
When I went fishing, I caught an old shoe, a plastic bag and a bad cold.

Note: Important points regarding the punctuations and capital letters are:
- Always write the pronoun ‘I’ and the interjection ‘O’ in capital letters.
- When the abbreviation ends with the final letter of the full words, some writers prefer to omit the full stops like Mr, Mrs, Dr, St (street) and St (saint.
- No comma is required before ‘and’.
- Where the words are arranged in pairs joined by ‘and’ or ‘or’, the comma is omitted.
- A defining phrase should not be separated by a comma.
- The semicolon is usually followed by conjunctions like ‘and’, ‘but’ or ‘or’.
- The interrogation mark is not used after an indirect question.
- The interrogation mark is not used after a polite request or submission.