Punctuation
Introduction
. full stop
This ends a sentence, including when it’s at the bottom of an ! and a ?. A full stop used to appear in abbreviations – the U.N., Mr. and Mrs. – but much less so these days, especially with abbreviations that have turned into acronymic words, like FIFA and UNESCO. Also called a full point, a dot and, in the US, a period.
? question mark
Just the one, at the end of the sentence, unlike Spanish which also starts a question with an upside-down question-mark – rather usefully, signalling a question at the get-go, but it’s never caught on with us.
! exclamation mark
This raises the volume, from statement to exclamation. Most literally, it can signify a shout or call – “Hey! You!” Metaphorically, it can indicate some kind of remarkableness – “Even worse, it was lime-green!”
And that’s where the exclamation mark can be dangerously tempting to a certain sort of enthusiastic writer who wants to convey excitement or amazement or even just vague jollity and friendliness. One of my textees uses exclamation marks to end every sentence – “See you tomorrow! I’ll be there at 7.30!”; “soz, running late!”. But the meaninglessly benevolent exclamation mark is turning up in official prose too. Here, for example, is the What’s on Glasgow website, where the summary of almost every single event is an exclamation – "Good Move Glasgow run Health Walks right across the city which are suitable for all ages and abilities! Glasgow Central Tours offer you the chance to explore behind the scenes of Glasgow's most iconic and busiest landmarks, Central Station!"
“ ” inverted commas
(Also called quotation marks or speech marks.) These come as a pair and can be either single or double – the one regulation is that they must be used consistently: once you’ve used one form, you have to stick with it. If quotation marks are needed within an already existing set, the other pairing is used – single inside double, double inside single – and to use the non-chosen main form for quotes that appear inside quotes – “Did you see her ‘hat’?”
Inverted commas are used for direct speech or for brief quotes within the main body of the text. (Longer quotes should be indented and introduced by a colon and don’t have inverted commas.)
If inverted commas are used at the end of a sentence, they usually come after the full stop. In scholarly writing, the exception would be if the quote is not a full sentence, in which case the full stop comes after, but before any second set – eg, “her exact words were ‘that’s the most disgusting mankini I’ve ever seen’.”
A common mistake is to use inverted commas to mark a word or phrase as important in some way – in fact, they do the opposite, drawing attention to something as being not entirely trustworthy, not what it’s cracked up to be. Similarly, it’s a mistake to use inverted commas round words you’re not quite sure of, maybe because they sound informal – “the proposal was a ‘hit’ with the board”: either back the word or use a better word that doesn’t need inverted commas.
( ) brackets
These also work in pairs, on either side of an insert which is not essential, an extra bit, adding to or explaining or qualifying or even disagreeing with the main statement.
“He bought a mankini (in a tasteful lime-green) and then he ate an ice-cream”.
“He was wearing his new mankini (which I thought was very fetching) when he ate his ice-cream.”
Theoretically, brackets can also be used as a sort of authorial aside – writer talking direct to reader – but I think this use is very dodgy, too often creating a dorky sort of archness –
“He went out for a walk (and that wasn’t all).”
. . . ellipses
Three full stops (with a space after each) to show that something has been missed out. At the end of a sentence they usually indicate that something is not going to be said, maybe in a tailing-off (“Apples and pears and bananas and . . .”) or a meaningful omission (“Well, that is one idea . . .”).
Ellipses also have the very specific use of showing that a sequence continues in the same way – eg, “1, 4, 9, 16, 25 . . .”.
– dash
In a pair, dashes can be used instead of brackets to mark an insert, the kind that would leave the rest of the sentence still making sense if it was taken out: “I was heading for the post office – just as the aliens landed – but there was a really long queue so I went to the pub instead.”
A single dash can also be used to indicate something that follows on somehow or is an example of the main statement – such as this addition right here. A single dash can be a way of connecting phrases or statements without specifying the connection, because that’s obvious or unnecessary. (See also the end of the entry on commas.)
- hyphen
Like a sprint across a road, this is a little dash. In the olden days before computers, hyphens were often used in print at the end of lines if they formed a straight margin on the right and a word had to be split to fit. These days our screens either allow non-straight margins or do the straightening for us, so the only job left for the hyphen is to show that words are joined, to be taken as one unit. These joined words often belong to the same word-class, as in names (Knowles-Carter, Cee-Lo, Schleswig-Holstein). Similarly, the hyphen in “ice-cream” joins two nouns and two adjectives in “extra-large”.
A hyphen can also indicate which words go together – strictly speaking, a “high-street shop” without the hyphen would be a shop on a somehow elevated road with “high” and “street” working wrongly as separate adjectives.
Hyphens are not needed between adverbs and adjectives, because their relationship is already defined by the grammar, the adverb describing the adjective – so in “highly regarded employee” or “unfortunately bony fish” no hyphens appear. The exception is “well” which does need a hyphen as an adverb to distinguish it from its other meaning as an adjective – so it has to be a “well-rounded individual”, otherwise, technically speaking, “well” would be an adjective and the phrase would be describing someone who is in good health and curvy. One final pernicketiness with “well”: if the adverbial “well” turns up after the noun it’s describing it doesn’t have a hyphen – “they were well read, well rounded and well educated”.
One rather rarefied use of the hyphen is to join several words together if they’re forming a single, usually adjectival, unit – “a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity”; “that I’m-the-only-one-here-who’s-wearing-a-mankini feeling”.
‘ apostrophe
This is one of the most feared and ire-provoking items of our language. However, despite its hideous reputation, the apostrophe is really a fairly tame creature. It has two main uses:(1) to show that something has been missed out (“isn’t”, “aren’t”, “o’er”);
(2) to show that the “s” ending of the noun is a possessive (“the girl’s toaster”, “the boy’s kettle”, “my aunt’s pen”).
(1) omissions – apostrophes are mostly used in verb contractions, like “can’t”, “won’t” and “wouldn’t’ve”. These can be a little tricky, because it’s an imperfect system (eg “shan’t” logically should be “sha’n’t”). They can also indicate something missing in words such as “where’er” and “fo’c’sle” (shortened from “forecastle”).
(2) possessives – apostrophes can get a bit complicated when the “s” in the noun is plural and possessive, in which case the apostrophe goes after the “s” – “the girls’ ball”, “the teddy-bears’ picnic”, “the trousers’ redness”. If the plural doesn’t end in an “s”, the apostrophe goes back to coming before it – “the children’s playground”, “the women’s vote”. If the noun ends in an “s” in the singular, the normal ‘ + s pattern applies – “chess’s complexity”; “Loch Ness’s monster”. (With family names that end in an “s”, two conventions are possible – “the Smith-Jones’ house” or “the Smith-Jones’s house”.) The way to check is to think of the apostrophe as an “of” for the word before it – “the boy’s kettle” = the kettle of the boy; “the girls’ ball” = the ball of the girls; “the ice-creams’ flavours” = the flavour of two or more ice-creams. (This is an area where English’s grammatical simplicity causes confusion in speech as well, so we often end up repeating the word with an emphasised “z” – “the girls’ ball, girlzih, plural” – to show that the noun is possessive as well as that there’s more than one.)
But the problem with apostrophes is their misuse elsewhere, particularly with plural nouns. Because many of us are tempted, for one vague reason or another, to put in an extra ’ at the end of a normal plural noun. This is sometimes called the greengrocer's apostrophe, in tribute to those signs for “Potatoe’s”, “apple’s” and “Banana’s”. It’s only my impression, but I think that this stray, extra, pointless, hapless apostrophe tends to turn up in the plural of words that end with a vowel – hence mistakes such as “dilemma’s”, “barbecue’s” , “piano’s”, even very possibly “apostrophe’s”. Mind you, even the most straightforward plurals can cause problems – for example, “the head’s of writers”, a phrase which turns up rather worryingly in writingexplained.org, one of the grammar-checking websites.
The rule to remember is that apostrophes can appear in nouns only to indicate that the “s” is a possessive – if it’s a normal “s” showing a normal plural, an apostrophe is never, ever used. Ever.
Perhaps the trickiest word with an apostrophe is “it” – “it’s” is the shortened form of “it is”, with the apostrophe indicating the missing vowel. “Its” is the possessive form of “it” – “the dog chased its tail”. (The mistaken use is understandable, because the possessive “its” doesn’t have a possessive apostrophe – neither do the other possessive pronouns, “hers”, “his”, “ours”, “theirs” or “yours”.) Similarly, “you’re” is the contraction of “you are” and “your” is the possessive form – “You’re looking great for your age”.
With several ways of going wonky, apostrophes have an uncanny ability to scare or provoke. An actually mostly sensible guide is called Fucking Apostrophes, which sums up how many English speakers feel about them. Misuses have been attacked by the Apostrophe Protection Society, an institution often cited in British newspaper articles which was actually a retired sub-editor in Lincolnshire. (John Richards gave up in 2019, citing his age (96) and the vain struggle to overcome “the ignorance and laziness present in modern times”.) But let us forgive rather than condemn the apostrophe’s misuse, when it turns up where it shouldn’t or where it goes missing, as it did in the unfortunate website for a Bangladeshi restaurant in London called Anu’s Kitchen.
, comma
Basically, commas separate things. These can be individual items in a list (“apples, pears, oranges”; “truly, madly, deeply”; “Neymar, Messi, Ronaldo, Ritchie”). The usual British regulation is that there is no comma before the final “and” in a list, so it is “apples, pears and oranges”). However, the Oxford University Press in the UK and most American authorities insist on a comma before the “and” (“the good, the bad, and the ugly”) – this is the “Oxford comma”, recommended for Americans, but definitely not for Brits. Over the past 150-odd years of general literacy, the trend has been for less and less punctuation, with very good, actually clarifying results, by and large, and the demise of the needless Oxford comma, in Britain at least, is a good thing.
As in that slightly-too-long sentence, commas are also used to separate the individual components of a sentence’s structure. These components can be the phrases or words that surround the main statement – “When he saw the greengrocer sitting in the tree, the boy threw his kettle at him”; “Unfortunately, the kettle, bought in Borneo, hit the greengrocer on the head, knocking off his cap.” If two nouns or noun-phrases turn up together and they aren’t meant to be joined in some sort of list, that’s usually an indication of two separate components of a sentence that need to be separated by a comma – “When he saw the ice-cream van, the boy shouted with glee.”
Be careful not to put a comma between a subject and its verb even if the subject is a really long phrase – “People who choose to make as their principal home buildings constructed mainly of glass shouldn’t throw stones”; “the boy with the runny nose and wearing the Chelsea replica top that was appallingly stained by what one could only hope was ketchup and brown sauce ate the ice-cream”. As a general stylistic rule, it’s a good idea to keep the subject and verb close together, unlike the previovus sentence where the subject is “the boy” and the verb two lines later is “ate”. (See Placing the Subject in Writing Tips and Advice).
Commas are also used within direct speech – “'It wasn’t me,’ he said, ‘because I don’t even have a kettle.’” Some people use colons to introduce direct speech, as in a playscript – “He said: ‘It definitely wasn’t me’”. Commas are the more usual method – “She said, ‘I don’t know why he was sitting in a tree in the first place.’”
A comma also turns up before the name of someone being addressed, to set it apart from the rest of the sentence – “Good afternoon, Mr Smith”; “Hello, Dolly”; “Let’s eat, Grandma.”
What commas can’t do is join two main clauses -- parts of the sentence which each have a main verb and could be individual sentences themselves. According to our current conventions, a sentence like “It was a hot day, the boy ate an ice-cream” is simply not on. A comma is the least strong of the separating punctuation marks, and not strong enough to separate two main clauses. This applies even if the two clauses are linked by a connecting word like “however” or “nevertheless” or a connecting phrase like “as a result” – “It was a cold day, nevertheless the boy ate an ice-cream” is still not on.
If you want to join two main clauses in one sentence, you can use a conjunction like “and” or “but” or, preferably, a word or phrase that explains the connection, with no comma – “It was a hot day so the boy ate an ice-cream”. Linking two statements with just a comma means that there’s a lack in the meaning, because the connection between the two main statements is implied but not explained – “The boy ate the ice-cream too quickly, he got a headache”; “It was a muddy pitch, I scored a spectacular own-goal”; “She missed her bus, her boss was miffed”. In all of those cases, the commas should be removed and either replaced by two separate sentences or, preferably, amended to clarify the relationship between the two statements. If you do want to keep the relationship unspecified, and you want to keep the two statements in one sentence, the solution is to use a dash: “It was a hot day – the boy ate an ice-cream” and “She missed her bus – her boss was miffed” are, I think, fine. Well, fine as far as the punctuation goes because there’s still no explanation of how the two events are connected.
; semi-colon
And finally we’ve reached – insert three descending chords of horror-music; pum, pum, PUM – the semi-colon. Widely feared, often abused, sorely misunderstood.
But easily avoided. If you are uncertain about semi-colons, don’t use them – use dashes instead, or shorter sentences. Here, I hope for theoretical purposes only, are the rules.
Semi-colons mark a separation with more strength than a comma. So they can be used to separate longer items in a list, especially if the list is introduced by a colon. “These mankinis come in three colours: pillar-box red with a hint of magenta; fashionable squid-ink dark-blue; vibrant lime-green”. One convention is to drop the final semi-colon if there’s an “and”, and use a comma instead – “Discreet padding is available in the following sizes: socially acceptable; very noticeable; slightly scary, and jumbo.”
A semi-colon can also separate components within a sentence but with a force greater than a comma. This is where the semi-colon becomes dangerous because it appears to solve the two-main-clauses-shoved-together problem. “It was a hot day; the boy ate an ice-cream” is a punctuationally acceptable sentence. The drawback is that, as with the dash, the lack of meaning persists. There’s still no connection between the two statements, no explanation of their relationship, so just plonking the two main clauses together and joining them up with a semi-colon usually doesn’t work, unless you don't need or want to explain, say if you’re writing a haiku: “It was a hot day; / the boy in the white T-shirt / ate the cold ice-cream.”
: colon
The jump-scare after the scary bit, like Glenn Close surging out of the bath. A colon marks a separation within a sentence with even great strength than a semi-colon. Like its half-sibling, the colon has several uses and can be quite tricky to master. But it is also similarly avoidable by opting for dashes or shorter sentences instead.
Let’s start with two specific uses which are pretty straightforward: to introduce longer, indented quotations (which don’t need inverted commas because they’ve already been separated by the layout); and, as in this sentence, to go before lists of usually longer items, which are then separated by semi-colons. Still in its introducing role, a colon can be used in direct speech – “The boy said: ‘I want an ice-cream.’” I’m not a fan and would always use a comma, but the colon’s there as an option in dialogue for those as wants it. Similarly, a colon can introduce a subject – “Now let’s analyse the haiku’s first line: ‘It was a hot day.’” It can also turn an introduction into a fairly dramatic announcement – “There was only one thing he wanted: an ice-cream”.
Like semi-colons and unlike commas, colons can separate statements in sentences. Because the colon has greater powers than a semi-colon, the separated components should have a stronger connection – perhaps the statement before the colon is followed by an example of it (“he had many character defects: his vanity was the most puzzling”) or the one after the colon is a direct consequence of the statement before (“he wore his lime-green mankini: the other guests howled in protest”). In the lore I acquired, two parts of a sentence can be linked with a colon only if those two parts are balanced, grammatically as well as somehow in meaning or importance, and each usually has a main verb.