Symbols on Keyboards | Learn English Writing

want to speak real english from your first lesson sign up for your free lifetime account at englishclass101.com hi everybody my name is alicia in this lesson i'm going to talk about vocabulary words for symbols on english keyboards i'm also going to give an example sentence that uses each of these vocabulary words so let's get started let's begin on this side of the whiteboard the first symbol i want to talk about is the symbol it's a dot yes this dot is not in the middle of the line the dot appears here so this is called a period a period a period comes in this position here as in use a period at the end of a sentence so in english writing we place the period this dot mark here you'll find this on english keyboards everywhere this is how we use the period another very common mark is the comma the comma so commas are used in the middle of sentences usually or they might come near the beginning of a sentence we use a comma before a coordinating conjunction so if you want to know more about exactly when to use commas please search our english class 101 youtube channel or our website to find the video about how to use commas so when a comma appears in a sentence it looks like this usually so here this is very very easy to see i think but in the middle of a sentence a comma appears like this so here i would not it's not correct to use a comma right here but in a sentence it looks like this okay let's move on to the next word the next word is colon colon so these two dots one on top of another this mark is called a colon a colon so use a colon before a list for example so if i want to make a list i would make my colon like this and then i list item one item two item three for example this is one way to use a colon a colon this is the mark for it so again it's not correct i haven't made this sentence to be a list but that's how it would look in writing so we use colon sometimes before lists okay the next mark here is very very similar to the colon this is a dot and under it it looks like this comma this is called a semicolon a semicolon so we use a semicolon to connect independent clauses so independent clauses are two like individual ideas so this is a full sentence a full idea and another full sentence a complete idea we can connect those with semicolons for example use a semicolon to connect independent clauses semicolon use a period blah blah blah as i've said up here use a period at the end of a sentence so if i want to connect this idea and this idea together i can do that with a semicolon and i don't need to use a coordinating conjunction so again these are some punctuation related rules for more information about that please take a look at the other videos on our channel so this is a semicolon semicolon okay let's move on to the next one the next mark this mark looks just like the comma i know but the positioning of this mark is important this mark is called an apostrophe apostrophe this word is pronounced apostrophe so in a sentence we would say never use an apostrophe to make a word plural never use an apostrophe to make a word plural so we use apostrophes to show possession so for example if i want to say something belongs to me or someone wants to say something belongs to me i use an apostrophe before the s there this shows it's something belonging to alicia the apostrophe looks like this just a quick dash a quick mark between the last letter of my name and an s so this shows possession something belongs to me we use an apostrophe to show possession so it looks like this on a keyboard the mark may look like this but it appears above the letters please note that a comma appears on the line where the letters rest kind of like where the comma or i'm sorry where the period appears a comma appears there an apostrophe appears above the letters okay let's move on to our next mark them the next mark this is a mark that comes in a pair that means there's a set these are called quotation marks quotation marks so use quotation marks to show dialogue dialogue is for example when you're reading a story and character a says something character b says something we mark the character's speech with quotation marks so when the character begins speaking we use these open quotation marks when the character finishes speaking we use these closed quotation marks so this helps the reader understand where the speech starts and where the speech stops so this makes reading much easier these are called quotation marks quotation marks to be very specific these are double quotation marks you can see there are two lines here when you're making in some specific situations you're making a like a quotation inside a quotation this is a very specific situation when you do that you'll use single quotation marks these look like apostrophes a little bit so again that's for very specific situations in most cases you only need to use the regular double quotation marks okay let's move on then to the next list of items the next list is starts here with this hyphen hyphen so this is a very short mark a very short horizontal dash please keep in mind there are a couple of other dashes that we use in english writing but you don't find those typically on keyboards or they're not as commonly used from the keyboard a hyphen however is on the keyboard we use hyphens to connect words so connect words with a hyphen so in a word or phrase like free for all we connect free for and all together with hyphens hyphens come between the words so there are some rules for when to use hyphens but the mark for today's lesson this mark is called a hyphen a hyphen okay let's go to the next one the next word is slash slash you may see this direction you may see the other direction to a slash in the other direction most commonly we see the slash in this direction so a slash is commonly used online slashes are common in url so urls those are like the website names the names that we type in to go to websites so slashes are common in urls it's also very common in programming too okay our next vocabulary word again it's a pair these things are called parentheses parentheses so as i talked about with quotation marks when we use parentheses we need to use them in a pair this one just as with quotation marks this one that's shaped like this is called the open parentheses this is used when we begin sharing some extra information this one is called the closed parentheses mark the closed parentheses we use this when we finish sharing extra information so as i said we use parentheses to give extra information so maybe it's not the most important point but we want to share a little bit of extra information in our sentence we can put parentheses around that information that shows that it's just kind of extra so open parentheses closed parentheses these are very commonly used um and you can find them easily on most i think english keyboards okay let's go to the next mark this mark is called ampersand ampersand you might i suppose here people call it the and mark because we use an ampersand in place of and so if you want to describe something that is like a law firm or an organization and there's an and in the title of that in many cases like to save space you'll see this used in place of and so for example company a and company b instead of writing and in the middle they might use ampersand so this is up to kind of the company or the person's choice or sometimes it's just to save space but this is called an ampersand okay onward to the next mark this mark has become very important with the rise of social media we call this at or the at mark so we use the at mark in email addresses so for example your name at gmail.com so we use at to describe this mark we also use this in social media handles for our usernames on social media before our username we use the app mark so that means that's how you can reach that person this has also interestingly become a verb as in at me your information or please don't at me which means like reply or don't tag me in something so we use at or at mark to describe this okay one more in this part of the list this mark here this is called the pound sign or the number sign so we use the pound sign before a phone number this is very commonly used before a phone number so you might see it or you would have seen it in like an old phone book for example however i should note that this is also read these days as hashtag so when you see this in social media posts especially on like instagram or twitter when you see this mark plus a word so for example this mark plus english it should be read as hashtag english so in that case we do not read it as pound sign or number sign english it's read as hashtag so those are tags for the thing that you are sharing that's a different use of it so in today's english and today's very internet driven vocabulary we use hashtag to mention or to describe this mark okay let's go to the last list the last part of the list rather this is called an exclamation point an exclamation point or an exclamation mark end the sentence with an exclamation point to show surprise so when we end a sentence with this mark it means we should read it with like a more excited voice or we should read it with an exclamation so for example when i read this sentence i could use that excited tone of voice like end a sentence with an exclamation point to show surprise that's the feeling of using an exclamation point so you might see this used a lot on social media to show surprise or to show shock or maybe if someone is scared they would use an exclamation point to describe that okay another very important mark is the question mark the question mark in english we end questions with a question mark we do not begin questions with any kind of question mark the question mark is at the end of the sentence only end a question with a question mark okay the next symbol is this this star symbol this is called an asterisk an asterisk so it's quite difficult to say this word even for native speakers asterisk some people might call it a star that's okay but this is called an asterisk so we use asterisks sometimes for notes so you might see this very small mark at the end of a sentence or maybe at the end of a word especially in a book we don't see this so much in like social media but you might see this at the end of a sentence or at the end of a word you see this little star mark this asterisk mark and often times at the bottom of the page or at the end of the chapter there's a note about that sentence or about that word so we match this asterisk to an asterisk at a different place on the page that has more information in a short note so this is a common way that we use asterisks in english writing okay the next two are like math related symbols this mark we usually just call it the plus plus we might call it like the plus sign or the plus mark but in most cases we just say plus when we see this symbol plus so use plus for more specific searches so i wanted to include this because this is a really helpful thing that you can use when you're doing a google search for information same thing with quotation marks so if for example you want to search for something specific let's say for example you want to know how to find a lesson about present perfect tense and you want it to be a lesson about english present perfect tense if you want to look for this on google specifically you can put in quotation marks present perfect tense so that means you want to search for this phrase exactly and you can include the plus mark to show you want to include something else so present perfect tense this phrase plus maybe english or another phrase or maybe advanced english for example so using a plus can help you to make more specific searches so you want your search results to be something that's about present perfect tense and advanced english so using plus can help you do that making your searches a little bit more specific of course you can also use this in math plus okay next one as i said also a math related mark this is the equals mark or just equals in most cases we read this as equals equals so we use the equals mark in math we show the solution to something or like the end result of something with the equals mark so sometimes we don't always use just math with this like for example in some social media posts people might describe their day and say for example friends plus sunshine plus delicious food equals great day so it's kind of like a math situation but we use plus and equals to show these things together equals or has the result of something so you may see this used in social media a lot okay the last item for this lesson is this so again this is another pair these are called brackets brackets so you can find these on english keyboards yes perhaps from this list they are the least commonly used we use brackets for extra information inside parentheses so i talked about parentheses here we use parentheses to give extra information but sometimes it's not so common sometimes inside the parentheses we want to give even more extra information to do that we use brackets inside the parentheses so we need to clearly show like the hierarchy so this is the first level extra information second level extra information is with brackets brackets so again we have this open bracket and a closed bracket we need to use these in pairs so brackets go inside parentheses this is one way to use this okay so this is an introduction to some i think very uh useful everyday vocabulary these are all very common fairly common maybe this is the least common as i said these are all common symbols that we use pretty much every day when we're using the computer when we are emailing people when we are using social media and so on these are also things you can notice as you are reading books so the rules that i talked about in this lesson are also applied to books sometimes the rules are a little bit different depending on if the thing you're reading is like a magazine or a newspaper some different types of writing follow slightly different rules but in general this is a fairly good guideline for how you can use these symbols as well and the vocabulary words for them the names of these symbols so i hope that this was helpful for you of course if there are other symbols that you want to know more about or if you have any other questions about english keyboards please feel free to let us know in the comment section of this video also if you liked this video please don't forget to give it a thumbs up subscribe to our channel if you haven't already and check us out at englishclass101.com for some other things that can help you with your english studies thanks very much for watching this lesson and i will see you again soon bye want to speed up your language learning take your very first lesson with us you'll start speaking in minutes and master real conversations sign up for your free 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Channel: Learn English with EnglishClass101.com

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Keywords: English Language (Interest), learn english, Language (Quotation Subject), Teacher (Profession), american culture, english culture, EnglishClass101, how to, speak, write, read, english, native speaker, english grammar, grammar lesson, basic english grammar, spelling tips, english spelling, painless tips

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Length: 19min 8sec (1148 seconds)

Published: Wed Dec 08 2021