The punctuation choices you make in your writing will greatly affect the academic tone you achieve in that writing. This unit will provide suggestions on using punctuation to more clearly signal relationships between ideas in your writing and also on choosing more sophisticated punctuation in your writing such as:

using colons more frequently in your writing; for example,

A large increase in economic growth occurred during that period: more coal than ever before was sold on overseas markets.

using semi-colons more frequently in your writing; for example,

The graph indicates the large increase in growth experienced by the economy; it also illustrates which sectors were responsible for this growth.

knowing when to use a colon as opposed to a semi-colon; for example,

Working memory is limited in terms of capacity: it can only process around seven items of information at any one time.
Working memory is limited in terms of capacity; it is also limited in terms of duration.