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About this tool
Graded punctuation practice on commas, semicolons, apostrophes, colons, quotation marks and dashes, with the rule shown after each answer.
Punctuation Practice Drill is a multiple-choice trainer that asks you to pick the correctly punctuated version of a sentence and then shows the exact rule being tested. It covers 25 items across seven areas: commas, semicolons, apostrophes, colons, quotation marks, end marks and run-ons, and hyphens and dashes. It suits students preparing for board or competitive English papers, and anyone whose writing keeps attracting the same red pen.
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Each item names the rule it tests, so a wrong answer teaches something instead of just scoring zero.
Practise one mark at a time — commas, semicolons, apostrophes — rather than a random mix.
Cases where British and American style genuinely differ are avoided or labelled, so answers are defensible.
A comma splice is two independent clauses joined by only a comma, as in 'It rained all night, the match was cancelled.' There are three standard fixes: replace the comma with a semicolon, break it into two sentences, or add a coordinating conjunction after the comma ('It rained all night, so the match was cancelled').
Use a semicolon to join two clauses that could each stand alone as a sentence, and to separate list items that already contain commas. A semicolon cannot introduce a dependent clause — 'We cancelled the trip; because the roads were flooded' is wrong, because the second half cannot stand alone.
'It's' is only the contraction of 'it is' or 'it has'; the possessive is 'its' with no apostrophe. The safest test is to read the sentence with 'it is' substituted — if it still makes sense, you want it's. The form 'its'' does not exist in English.
A colon goes after a complete independent clause, so 'The kit contains three items: a torch, a rope and a whistle' is correct while 'The kit contains: a torch, a rope and a whistle' is not. Never place a colon between a verb and its object or complement.