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There are fourteen punctuation marks commonly used in English grammar. They are the period, question mark, exclamation point, comma, semicolon, colon, dash, hyphen, parentheses, brackets, braces, apostrophe, quotation marks, and ellipsis.
The period, question mark, and exclamation point are appropriate for use as sentence endings.
The period (.) is placed at the end of declarative sentences, statements thought to be complete and after many abbreviations.
Use a question mark (?) to indicate a direct question when placed at the end of a sentence.
The exclamation point (!) is used when a person wants to express a sudden outcry or add emphasis.
The comma (,) is used to show a separation of ideas or elements within the structure of a sentence. Additionally, it is used in numbers, dates and letter writing after the salutation and closing.
The comma, semicolon and colon are some of the most commonly misused punctuation marks because they all can indicate a pause in a series.
The semicolon (;) is used to connect independent clauses. It shows a closer relationship between the clauses than a period would show.
A colon (:) has various uses, but three are most commonly used. The first is after a word introducing a quotation, an explanation, an example, or a series. The second is between independent clauses, when the second explains the first, similar to a semicolon. The third use of a colon is for emphasis.
Two other common punctuation marks are the dash and hyphen. These marks are often confused with each other due to their appearance but they are very different.
A hyphen is used to join two or more words together into a compound term and is not separated by spaces. For example, part-time, back-to-back, well-known.
A dash is used to separate words into statements.
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