IELTS Writing Punctuation: The Four Errors Inside Grammatical Range and Accuracy

Most advice about punctuation in IELTS Writing teaches comma rules in the abstract. That is not what costs candidates marks. What costs marks is a small set of errors that repeat in almost every answer, and that sit inside one named criterion.

Punctuation is not a separate score. It lives in Grammatical Range and Accuracy, which is one of the four criteria your writing is marked on, and the public band descriptors name it directly. So punctuation is worth exactly as much as verb tenses are, and it is far quicker to fix.

This post covers the four errors in the order they appear in candidate writing, with the sentence as it is usually written and the sentence corrected.

Where punctuation sits in the marking

The four criteria are Task Response (called Task Achievement in Task 1), Coherence and Cohesion, Lexical Resource, and Grammatical Range and Accuracy. Each is given a whole band from 1 to 9. The four are averaged and the average is rounded to the nearest half band.

The public descriptors for Grammatical Range and Accuracy mention punctuation at four bands:

Read the band 5 line again. The test is whether the reader has difficulty. That is a useful standard, because it tells you which errors matter. A missing comma in a list is invisible. A missing sentence boundary makes the reader stop and work out where one idea ended and the next began.

So the four errors below are ordered by how much reading difficulty they cause, not by how often teachers mention them.

Error 1: the comma splice

This is the most common punctuation error in IELTS answers, in every first language group.

A comma splice is two complete sentences joined with a comma. Each half could stand alone, so a comma is too weak to hold them.

As written: Many cities are becoming crowded, this causes serious air pollution.

Both halves are complete. "Many cities are becoming crowded" is a sentence. "This causes serious air pollution" is a sentence. The comma is doing the job of a full stop.

Three ways to correct it:

• Full stop. Many cities are becoming crowded. This causes serious air pollution.
• Semicolon. Many cities are becoming crowded; this causes serious air pollution.
• A joining word. Many cities are becoming crowded, which causes serious air pollution.

The third version is the one worth practising, because it also produces a complex sentence, which the descriptors reward separately under grammatical range. You fix punctuation and widen your range in the same edit.

How to spot it in your own writing. Look at every comma. Cover the left half and read the right half alone. If the right half is a complete sentence, and the left half is too, the comma is wrong.

Error 2: however, therefore and moreover punctuated as if they were "and"

This is the comma splice wearing formal clothes, and it is more common in band 6 writing than in band 5 writing, because it appears when candidates start using linking words.

As written: Public transport is cheaper, however, many people still drive.

"However" is not a joining word in the way "and" or "but" are. It cannot hold two sentences together.

Corrected: Public transport is cheaper. However, many people still drive.

Also correct: Public transport is cheaper, but many people still drive.

The same applies to therefore, moreover, nevertheless, in addition and for example. Each begins a new sentence, with a full stop before it and a comma after it. The short version of the rule: full stop before, comma after.

This error has a second cost. Coherence and Cohesion is marked partly on how you use cohesive devices, so a linking word that is punctuated wrongly can read as mechanical in one criterion while being an error in another.

Error 3: the fronted clause with no comma

English puts a comma after an opening clause that is not the main sentence. Leave it out and the reader runs two ideas together before realising where the sentence turned.

As written: Although governments spend heavily on new roads congestion continues to rise.

The reader reaches "roads congestion" and has to reverse.

Corrected: Although governments spend heavily on new roads, congestion continues to rise.

The same comma belongs after these openings: While, If, Because, When, Since, Despite, In order to, and after an opening phrase like In the last twenty years.

Note the opposite error, which is also common. Do not put a comma straight after the joining word itself. Although, many people disagree is wrong. The comma goes at the end of that clause, not after the first word.

Error 4: apostrophes on plurals

An apostrophe never makes a word plural. This error is frequent and it is counted twice, because word formation sits in Lexical Resource as well.

In Task 2 the safest habit is to avoid contractions altogether and write it is, do not, they are in full. Formal register expects it, and you remove one whole class of error at the same time.

A short before and after

Before. In many countries the cost of housing is rising, this is a problem for young people, however, governments are reluctant to act, although they announce new plans every year the number of homes built stays low.

That is four ideas, two splices, a misused however, and a missing comma after a fronted clause. The reader has to do the work of finding the sentence boundaries.

After. In many countries the cost of housing is rising, which is a serious problem for young people. However, governments are reluctant to act. Although they announce new plans every year, the number of homes built stays low.

Not one word of vocabulary changed. The ideas are identical. What changed is that the reader is no longer doing the author's work, which is the difference the band 5 descriptor line describes.

A two minute check you can run on any answer

Do these three passes in order. They take about two minutes on a 270 word essay.

1. Count your full stops. If you have fewer than twelve in a Task 2 answer, you are probably running sentences together. Short sentences are not penalised. Faulty punctuation is.
2. Check every comma. Cover the left half, read the right half. Two complete halves means the comma must become a full stop, a semicolon, or a which.
3. **Find every however, therefore and moreover.** Each one needs a full stop in front of it, unless it opens the sentence.

Then read the answer out loud in your head and stop where the punctuation tells you to stop, not where the meaning tells you to. If you run out of breath, the sentence needs splitting.

What to do today

• Take the last essay you wrote and do pass two only. Count how many commas you change. Most candidates find between three and six.
• Rewrite one comma splice using which rather than a full stop, so the fix also adds a complex sentence.
• Pick one of the four errors above, the one you found most often, and watch for only that one in your next three answers. Chasing all four at once is how none of them change.

Punctuation is hard to see in your own writing, because you read what you meant rather than what you wrote. Pasting an answer into Bandly returns an estimated band for each of the four criteria and quotes the sentences behind each estimate, so a punctuation problem shows up as the specific sentences that caused it. Those bands are estimates from a scoring engine and have not been checked against a qualified examiner, so use them to locate the sentences, then make the correction yourself.