- Is it a question or an exclamation? Sometimes a sentence can be either or both. So, either punctuation of the following sentence is acceptable: “How could you do that?” or “How could you do that!” It would be overkill to use both a question mark and an exclamation mark.
- Use a comma after a greeting in a friendly letter; use a colon after a greeting in a formal letter. So, it’s “Dear Mom,” when writing home, but “Dear Sen. McCain:” when writing to weigh in on a proposed law.
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