Punctuation Marks in English Grammar
N. B. Capitalization, the period, the comma, the semi-colon and
quotation marks have already been seen in class.
Name When to Use It Example
The period (Amr. Eng.) 1. To mark the end of a declarative sentence. Spring break is almost over.
Full-stop (British Eng.)
2.To indicate an abbreviation in American Eng. Dr. Brown, Ms. Nelson, 7 p.m.
3. After single words that can stand alone and form Hello.
a sentence. Stop.
4. To separate the whole number from the decimal. 9.76 = Nine point seventy-six
The ellipsis To indicate omissions (something from the quoted You know how I’m feeling…
text is left out).
The comma To add breathing pauses to the sentence and
organize its blocks.
1. Before coordinating conjunctions linking They want to learn English, yet they
between independent clauses. never attended.
This afternoon, I went to Oxford Circus,
2. To separate words and groups of words in list.
Picadilly, Hamstead, and Gatwick
Airport.
3. To enclose parenthetical elements (non-essential My lab colleague, Omar, published a
details and comments). new article.
4. After introductory phrases. Knowing that he plagiarized, I could not
5. Before tag questions. You analyzed the results, didn’t you?
6. After interjections (commas or exclamation Wow, that was impressive.
points).
The semicolon 1. To join independent clauses, which are She collected the data; she even
thematically linked, in place of a conjunction. discussed the results.
2. To separate phrases in a list which already The speakers were: Dr Sally Meadows,
contain a comma. Biology; Dr Fred Eliot, Animal Welfare;
Ms Gerri Taylor, Sociology; and Prof.
Julie Briggs, Chemistry.
The colon 1. To introduce quotes, explanation, examples, list He did only one mistake: misspelled my
of items. name.
2. To separate the hour from minutes in writing 8:33
time.
The quotation marks 1. To cite some else’s exact words. As claimed by Peter Van Houten, “pain
demands to be felt.”
2. To mark out idioms and unfamiliar expressions. She is a true “pain in the neck.”
The hyphen/ the dash 1. It is called a hyphen when it joins words Tooth-paste, re-cover, and sixty-four
together as in compound nouns, verbs, adjectives
and numbers.
2. It is called a dash when it separates words as in We might find the solution-you never
parenthetical elements and comments. It is less know.
formal than using parentheses or two commas.
Brackets (British Eng.) Just like commas, they are used to add an Linda and Sally (who were lab partners)
Parentheses (Amr. Eng) explanation or comments. discovered a new species.
[ ] brackets (American Eng.)/ square brackets
(British Eng.) are mostly used for technical
explanations.
The apostrophe 1. In contractions Can’t, won’t , you’d
2. In possessive forms Prof. Brown’s theory, My friends’
handouts
The exclamation mark To add emphasis, to show surprise or strong That’s unbelievable!
(British Eng.) emotion
The exclamation point
(American Eng.)
The question mark To mark the end of direct questions. Where is the lab mouse?
No question mark is needed at the end of reported She asked me where the lab mouse was.
questions.
For practice, check out these two websites, among others:
https://owl.english.purdue.edu/exercises/3/
http://www.bristol.ac.uk/arts/exercises/grammar/grammar_tutorial/page_55.htm
