Punctuating Clauses
Use semi-colons, colons, and dashes to mark boundaries between independent clauses, choosing the appropriate punctuation based on the relationship between the clauses
How to tell they’ve got it
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Try this together
When your child writes two closely related sentences, can they join them with a semi-colon or colon — like "It was late; the streets were empty" — rather than always using a full stop or "and"?
Where this sits on the map
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solid = must come firstdashed = helps
Curriculum alignment
Candidate matches to official curriculum codes — machine-suggested, unreviewed (v0.1).
Show candidate curriculum codes · 3 ACARA · 3 VIC
Australian Curriculum v9 candidate
understand that punctuation signals dialogue through quotation marks and that dialogue follows conventions for the use of capital letters, commas and boundary punctuation
understand that complex sentences contain one independent clause and at least one dependent clause typically joined by a subordinating conjunction to create relationships, such as time and causality
understand how embedded clauses can expand the variety of complex sentences to elaborate, extend and explain ideas
Victorian Curriculum 2.0 codes & levels only
These are candidate alignments generated by semantic matching — machine-suggested and unreviewed (v0.1), not official or verified mappings. For official curriculum content see australiancurriculum.edu.au, curriculum.nsw.edu.au and f10.vcaa.vic.edu.au. Don’t rely on them for registration or compliance purposes.