This 90-minute webinar considers the role of the major punctuation marks, establishing where their use is discretionary and where it is essential to remove ambiguity and ensure clarity. This masterclass will consider how to set a course between the often competing positions of an organisation’s house style and the individual preferences of writers and editors; it will also examine some of the key differences between US and UK uses, and the extent to which it is helpful to use online tools.
Attendees will be able to post queries in the chat, and the tutor will respond to these after the session. Participants will receive extensive supporting materials to provide a useful reference and reinforce their understanding.
Sign up for both Making Sense of Punctuation and Making Sense of Grammar and save £40.
Next session
5 March 2026
Price
£60 + VAT
Course format
- Virtual classroom
- 10:00am to 11.30am
- 90 minutes with no break
Date information for future sessions
March 2026
- Dates: 5 March 2026
- Times: Each session will run from 10.00am to 11.30am
November 2026
- Dates: 18 November 2026
- Times: Each session will run from 10.00am to 11.30am
What you will need
To join the course, you will need access to a computer, tablet or laptop with a camera and microphone. You will need to activate a free Zoom account to join the course. This takes 2 minutes and does not require any payment. It is purely for administrative purposes.
About the tutor(s)
After an early career in teaching, educational research and educational publishing, Andrew Steeds went freelance, setting up Simply Put, a company focused on making unnecessarily complicated documents clearer and more accessible, in terms of both how they are written and how they are designed. For Simply Put, he works on his own, with designers and with others to support clients to communicate more clearly and more efficiently with their readers.
Andrew has been running courses for the Publishing Training Centre (PTC) for 25 years. His main focus is on editorial activity, but he has an equal interest in the process of writing and the presentation skills of grammar and punctuation, and he runs courses in these areas, too. The PTC’s Essential Grammar, an e-learning resource which he wrote in 2017, has so far had just under 2,000 student enrolments on the course.
He divides his training time equally between in-company work and open courses.
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