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Saint Patrick's Day

Saint Patrick's Day (Irish: Lá Fhéile Pádraig, "the Day of the Festival of Patrick") is a cultural and religious holiday celebrated on 17 March. It commemorates Saint Patrick (c. AD 387–461), the most commonly recognised of the patron saints of Ireland, and the arrival of Christianity in Ireland. It is observed by the Catholic Church, the Anglican Communion (especially the Church of Ireland), the Eastern Orthodox Church and Lutheran Church. Saint Patrick's Day was made an official feast day in the early seventeenth century, and has gradually become a celebration of Irish culture in general.

The day is generally characterised by the attendance of church services, wearing of green attire and the lifting of Lenten restrictions on eating, and drinking alcohol, which is often proscribed during the rest of the season.
Saint Patrick's Day is a public holiday in the Republic of Ireland, Northern Ireland, Newfoundland and Labrador and in Montserrat. It is also widely celebrated by the Irish diaspora, especially in places such as Great Britain, Canada, the United States, Argentina, Australia, and New Zealand, among others. Today, St. Patrick's Day is probably the most widely celebrated saint's day in the world.

(Source: Wikipedia)

Punctuation Marks in English

Punctuation marks

Punctuation marks are symbols that indicate the structure and organization of written language, as well as intonation and pauses to be observed when reading aloud.

The rules of punctuation vary with language, location, register and time and are constantly evolving. Certain aspects of punctuation are stylistic and are thus the author's (or editor's) choice. Tachygraphic language forms, such as those used in online chat and text messages, may have wildly different rules.

The apostrophe ( ’ , often rendered as  ' ) is a punctuation mark, and sometimes a diacritic mark, in languages that use the Latin alphabet or certain other alphabets. In English, it serves two main purposes: the omission of one or more letters (as in the contraction of does not to doesn't), and the marking of possessive cases (as in the cat's whiskers).

Brackets are tall punctuation marks used in matched pairs within text, to set apart or interject other text.

In British usage it normally refers to the "round" type, which is called a parenthesis mark in American usage.

The colon (:) is a punctuation mark consisting of two equally sized dots centered on the same vertical line.

As with many other punctuation marks, the usage of colon varies among languages and, within a given language, across historical periods. As a rule, however, a colon informs the reader that the following proves, explains or simply provides elements of what is referred to before.

The comma ( , ) is a punctuation mark. It has the same shape as an apostrophe or single closing quotation mark in many typefaces, but it differs from them in being placed on the baseline of the text. Some typefaces render it as a small line, slightly curved or straight, or with the appearance of a small filled-in number 9.

The comma is used in many contexts and languages, principally for separating things.

The comma may be used to perform a number of functions in English writing. It is used in generally similar ways in other languages, particularly European ones, although the rules on comma usage – and their rigidity – vary from language to language.

A dash is a punctuation mark. It is similar in appearance to a hyphen, but a dash is longer and it is used differently. The most common versions of the dash are the en dash (–) and them dash (—).

An exclamation mark, exclamation point, or bang (!) is a punctuation mark usually used after an interjection or exclamation to indicate strong feelings or high volume, and often marks the end of a sentence. Example: "Watch out!"

A sentence ending in an exclamation point is an actual exclamation ("Wow!", "Boo!"), a command ("Stop!"), or intended to be astonishing or show astonishment: "They were the footprints of a gigantic hound!" exclamation points can also be placed mid-sentence with a function similar to a comma's: "On the walk, oh! there was a frightful noise."

A full stop (British English) or period (American English) is the punctuation mark commonly placed at the end of sentences.

Usage: Abbreviations, Titles, Acronyms and Initialisms

Quotation marks or inverted commas (informally referred to as quotes and speech marks) are punctuation marks used in pairs to set off speech, a quotation, a phrase, or a word. They come as a pair of opening and closing marks in either of two styles: single ('…') or double ("…").

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