AN ANALYSIS OF PUNCTUATION ERRORS IN THE BACKGROUND OF THE SKRIPSI OF ENGLISH EDUCATION DEPARTMENT OF MURIA KUDUS UNIVERSITY

Hidayah, Khuliyatul. 2013. An Analysis of Punctuation Error in the Background of the Skripsi of English Education Department of Muria Kudus University. Skripsi. English Education Department, Teacher Training and Education Faculty, Muria Kudus University. Advisor: (i) Drs. Muh Syafei, M.Pd., (ii) Fitri Budi Suryani, SS, M.pd. Key words: Punctuation, analysis, background, skripsi In completing strata one (S1) of educational stage all the college students should write a final project or a scientific work based on the students’ research underneath lectures guidance to fulfill strata one (S1) of educational stage, Pedoman Skripsi Fakultas Krguruan dan Ilmu Pendidikan UMK (2012:1). This condition is applied to all departments; it is no exception in English Education Department. All the students of English Education Department ought to write a skripsi in English and certainly they must follow the system or rule of scientific work and English written language. Surprisingly, it is different from reality. The writer found many mistakes in punctuation in the skripsi written by English Education Department’s students. This research is aimed to identify the punctuation error that found in the background of the students’ final project of Muria Kudus University. Therefore, the design of this study is descriptive qualitative research. Descriptive research is applied to solve the problem by collecting, classifying, and analyzing the data carried out for describing a certain situation objectively, Ali (1984:5). The result of this study shows that the number of error is 221 and there are 9 kinds of punctuation errors; they are capital letter (37.1%), comma (25.8%), colon (14.5%), full stop (9.5%), hyphen (5.4%), oblique line (3.6%), quotation mark (2.7%), bracket (0.9%), and semi colon (0.5%). The error in using punctuation occurs because the students do not know the function of punctuation, the rules of punctuation which already stated in Pedoman Skripsi Fakultas Krguruan dan Ilmu Pendidikan Universitas Muria Kudus, and mistyping. The writer suggests the reader in general to be more aware in using punctuation (especially capital letter and comma) and to learn about the rule and the function of punctuation because punctuation is very important in written language