Yes of course they do teach us English punctuatio
n , but about the second question "do they know it themselves?" if I want to be honest i'm telling you that all of the teachers know the basics but they don't know the details.
- I have been in school since eight years and i've been lucky only once to have a good English teacher who can tell me and the other students every single thing about the punctuation.
- Yeah it's important to use punctuation in anything we write at English class but the students who do are very littl
e ,so it's gonna be wierd to find some of them on websites.
That's how we are in Jordan but I don't know how the other countries are.
-Thanks for asking such thing and i'm sorry for any grammatical or spelling mistakes " I'm not that good".
Thank you for your honest reply. As a reward, I will give you an important tip. (Actually, I'm not even addressing the details of punctuation - only its form.)
The only correct way to use a period or comma is this:
"word, word". That is, the punctuation mark comes directly after the end of a word, then comes a space, then another word.
This has no effect on meaning; it just makes a text easier to read. As I mentioned before, it's invariable. Open any English book by any English publisher, and you will find it thus. This is not an optional issue of style.
This might appear to be an unnecessary cultural imposition, but it's like putting your pants on before you go outside - it's just something we do in Western society. :-D We put a space after a punctuation mark, not before it.
I'm beginning to think there is an element of cultural antagonism, even from teachers, who might know correct punctuation, but do not use it since it appears to be caving in to arbitrary Western standards of form for no apparent benefit of increased clarity. If this is true, I'm sure the point is lost on most native speakers, who simply see incorrect punctuation.
In any case, it's not true that the form of punctuation has no effect on meaning. And any cultural message you might want to send would be better received if it is written in good English. So a deliberate policy of not using Western punctuation properly is largely self-defeating.
As far as learning English for personal advancement, as someone mentioned, you will not get a job requiring English if you cannot use the correct form of punctuation.
You have generally done quite well.