Punctuation Marks All You Ever Wanted to Know About Them

Punctuation Marks All You Ever Wanted to Know About Them

There are 14 punctuation marks used in English grammar. You probably know most of them, but it does not hurt to repeat them. They are the period, question mark, exclamation point, comma, semicolon, colon, dash, hyphen, parentheses, brackets, braces, apostrophe, quotation marks, and ellipsis. If you use them correctly, your writing will be much easier and appealing to read.

Of course, there are certain differences between punctuation in British and American English. They are not major, but they are still important. For example, in American English, such popular abbreviations like Mr., Ms., and Mrs. have periods. In British however, no periods are used. When writing the time, British English employs periods—where noon would be 12.00. In the same case, the American system uses colons (12:00). The names of the punctuation marks can also be different. Look at the table before we move on to find out how to use them. Let’s go deeper with our custom essay service.

Sentence Endings: The Period, Question Mark and Exclamation Point

Let’s begin with sentence endings. Sentences are an integral part of any text or message. You can end a sentence with the period, question mark, or exclamation point. The period (.) is usually used to end simple declarative sentences. In most cases, they complete statements that do not carry any special emotional meaning and do not infer a question.

Comma, Semicolon, and Colon

Inside a sentence, there are also plenty of punctuation marks to be used. The most common ones are the comma, semicolon, and colon. They all indicate a pause in the sentence, so they are often misused among each other. Here is how to know when to use each of the symbols:

The comma is used to separate logical parts of a sentence. It includes ideas or elements that are inside the structure of a sentence. A comma can also be used to separate repetitive parts of a sentence, such as numbers, dates, or objects that are similar to each other. A comma is also used after a greeting and the end of a letter, before and after mentioning someone’s name.

Dash and Hyphen

The dash and hyphen are also quite common punctuation marks. Although they look similar, they are very different.

A dash is used to separate words into statements, and also to indicate range or connections.

Brackets, Braces, and Parentheses

Symbols like brackets, braces, and parentheses are used to include words that are a further explanation of the following part of a sentence or are considered a group. Brackets ([ ]) are notations which are mostly used for technical explanations, or to clarify meaning. The important part about brackets is that if you remove the information in the brackets, the sentence will still make sense.

Apostrophe and Ellipsis

The final and less used three punctuation forms are the apostrophe, quotation marks, and ellipsis. An apostrophe (‘) is mostly used when: there is an omission of a letter or letters from a word, in the possessive case, or for plurals of lowercase letters.

So the important rule to remember is: “Quotation marks are used only with direct quotes”. You can quote not only a person, but also a written source.

There are two forms of direct quotations: run-in and block quotations. What are they and what is their difference? Run-in quotations are usually shorter. Their format is the same as the surrounding text. Block quotes are longer quotes that are separated from the surrounding text. Block quotations can even appear as a separate paragraph (or a series of paragraphs). They can also have a different font, a change in the line spacing, or have a wider margin.

So, the main rules about quotation marks are that if you open them, you need to close them as well. Where the quote starts and where it ends should be clear. Sometimes, the text inside quotation marks is capitalized, in other cases, it’s not. So if you’re quoting a complete sentence, you should start the quote with a capital letter. This is the case even if you start the sentence, not the quote itself.