1. The Dash, The Hyphen & The Ellipsis… A Tale of Three Friends

2. The Dash: Smooth & Stylish Use the dash for a sudden change of thought. An archeologist — of course I don’t mean you — is a person whose career lies in ruins.

3. The Dash: Smooth & Stylish Use the dash to emphasize the content enclosed within the dashes or the content that follows a dash. Everything depends on that trust fund — avoiding work, getting liposuction, becoming a finalist in the George Hamilton Cocoa Butter Open.

4. The Dash: Smooth & Stylish The dash can take the place of more subtle punctuation such as commas, semi-colons, colons and parentheses. Surrender your weapons — now!

5. The Hyphen: Short & Sweet Use the hyphen to join together two or more words that form a new word or expression. Great-grandmother Mind-numbing

6. The Hyphen: Short & Sweet Use hyphens in spelled-out fractions and compound numbers from 21 to 99. One-half Sixty-six

7. The Hyphen: Short & Sweet Use a hyphen when adding prefixes. Ex-husband Self-assured

8. The Ellipsis… Words Unsaid Use an ellipsis to show that you have deleted words or sentences from a passage that you are quoting. “Four score and seven years ago…a new nation…”

9. The Ellipsis… Words Unsaid Use an ellipsis to show a pause or an interruption in thought. “No,” I said. “I… I need my space.”

10. The Ellipsis… Words Unsaid Use an ellipsis to show that the story continues. And so…

11. Class Activity: “I hear voices” What are the following sentences missing — a dash, a hyphen or an ellipsis? You must mimic your answers like this sample voice track. (Hint: Each punctuation’s function is similar to the characteristics in its voice.

12. Class Activity: “I hear voices” We’ll have to fight them back to back. We will fly to Paris in June if I get a raise. My body is three quarters robotic. Juan thought and thought and then thought some more. The woman was quick witted. His weakness fire is my strength. “To be or not to be” Our much loved teacher was sixty three years old. I only want what’s mine money, power, and obedience.