Choose punctuation that correctly ends or joins complete clauses.
Free to use and free to share. There is no sign-up, no score, and nothing a child does here is recorded or sent anywhere.
Practise it now
Three marks are missing. Pick one from the tray, then tap the hole it belongs in.
This exercise practises mark a sentence boundary alongside its own main skill, Punctuation.
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A worked example
One question of the kind this skill is tested with, worked all the way through: the reasoning, and what the wrong answers are there to catch.
Full stop, comma or neither?
Worked example: see how the shape of each clause fixes the punctuation.
Punctuation at a boundary follows the clauses, not the pause you would take reading it.
Would you mind explaining how this lock works this morning…
Choices for the gap: ;, ,, ?, ..
Answer: ?
How you get there
The sentence opens by putting a question straight to the reader, so the whole thing is a question and closes with a question mark, even with a smaller question folded inside it. A comma separates parts of a sentence and a semicolon sits between two halves of a longer sentence, so neither can close one.
Why the other answers tempt
A natural pause is not evidence: readers pause at commas and full stops alike, so only the clause structure settles it.
If they are stuck, say this
A question word such as where, who or how can sit inside a sentence that asks nobody anything. Work out whether the sentence is putting a question TO you, or only talking about one.
Three marks are missing. Pick one from the tray, then tap the hole it belongs in.
This engine’s own main skill is Punctuation. It practises mark a sentence boundary alongside it.
Punctuation is the writing down of your voice. Read "Slow down Ben you will trip" aloud and you will hear two small pauses and one urgent ending. When you speak straight to somebody by name, that name gets a comma on each side to fence it off from the rest, which is why Ben needs one before and one after: without them, "Slow down Ben" sounds like Ben is the thing being slowed down. The ending is chosen by tone, and a warning shouted at somebody about to fall takes an exclamation mark rather than a full stop. Say the sentence, mark the pauses, then choose the ending that matches the feeling.
What to say if they get stuck
Read it out loud. Every place your voice pauses is a hole that wants a comma.
Ben is being spoken to, not talked about. A name you are addressing gets fenced off on both sides.
The last hole ends the whole thing. Is this a calm statement or a shout of warning?
The 11+ does not test these skills in isolation, and practising one in the wrong order wastes the practice. These are the skills the curriculum map connects this one to.
Separating a fronted adverbial presumes the main clause boundary is already secure.
How mark a sentence boundary differs from the skills beside it
The same exercise practises several skills, and telling them apart is often the difficulty rather than the exercise itself. On this page the skill is: choose punctuation that correctly ends or joins complete clauses, and it stops where excludes internal list and speech punctuation.
Questions parents ask about mark a sentence boundary
Answered from what the skill map records about this skill, not from a template. Every answer here is on the page, and the same questions are the page's FAQ structured data.
Choose punctuation that correctly ends or joins complete clauses. It is one of 41 named English skills in the 11+, in the punctuation strand, and this page carries 1 interactive exercise that practises it.
A natural pause is not evidence: readers pause at commas and full stops alike, so only the clause structure settles it. The wrong answers on this skill are built out of that, not out of random numbers, so it is worth naming out loud before your child meets it under time pressure.
Point at the next move rather than explaining the whole rule. A question word such as where, who or how can sit inside a sentence that asks nobody anything. Work out whether the sentence is putting a question TO you, or only talking about one.
Once it is secure, the skill map opens punctuate a fronted adverbial. Separating a fronted adverbial presumes the main clause boundary is already secure.
The skill map draws the line here: Excludes internal list and speech punctuation. A question past that line is testing a different named English skill, which is worth knowing before you spend a week practising the wrong one.
The punctuation strand holds 9 skills that are tested together, and the pages next to mark a sentence boundary are use a colon, punctuate direct address and punctuate direct speech. Each has its own exercise and its own link, and none of them needs an account.
Use Punctuation Pinball, embedded on this page. It is the exercise the skill map attaches to mark a sentence boundary, it runs in the browser with no account to make, nothing is scored, and nothing a child does here is recorded or sent anywhere. It also has its own link, so you can send it to a child without sending them anywhere else first.
Mark a sentence boundary is the step before punctuate a fronted adverbial
A free diagnostic maps the whole run of skills either side of this one, so practice follows the order the paper actually needs.
