Punctuation

Symbol

name

‘​​ 

apostrophe

*

asterix

@

at

()

brackets / parentheses

:

colon

,

comma

–

dash

…

ellipsis

!

exclamation mark

.

full stop/period

-

hyphen

?

question mark

;

semi-colon

[ ]

square brackets

/ & \

stroke / slash & backslash

“”

double quotation mark / speech mark /

‘…’

quotation marks / inverted commas

_

underline /​​ underscore

Word types

Examples

Names of days and month

Monday, Tuesday, January, February

Names of holidays

Christmas, Easter, Labour Day

Names and surnames of people

John Smith, Joe Blogs

Names of institutions, places, stars, planets, newspapers

Europe, The Thames, Sirius, Mars, The New York Times

Titles of people

Mr, Miss, Dr, Professor Black, Admiral Webb

Nouns and adjectives referring to countries and​​ nationalities

Britain, British, Germany, German, Spain, Spanish

The first word and other important words of book and movie titles

Star Wars, Captain America, Gulliver’s Travels, The Catcher in the Rye

Punctuation Mark

Usage

Example

Hyphen (-)

To create compound words

Off-limits, bottle opener, topsy-turvy, nice-looking

With some prefixes

Post-war, ex-wife, self-centered, co-worker

With numbers from 21 to 99 and​​ fractions

Twenty-eight, thirty-two, two-fifth

Punctuation Mark

Usage

Example

Full stop (.)

To show the end of the sentence

Cats like milk.

After people’s initials and titles

F. J. Kennedy, Dr. P. Black,

Mr. Smith

In some abbreviations

Punctuation Mark

Usage

Example

Question mark (?)

At the end of questions

Exclamation mark (!)

At the end of a command or exclamation

Comma (,)

After ‘yes’ and ‘no’ in answers

No, I’ve never met her.

Yes, I know it.

After greetings

Hi, how are you?

Dear Sir, Yours sincerely,

Between words in a list (except when we use ‘and’ or ‘or’)

He likes cars, books, bikes and trains.

In addresses​​ 

34 Main Road, Harrogate, North Yorkshire

In dates

18th​​ May, 2016

In numbers after the​​ thousands

5,349 / 123,569 / 45,864

After subordinate clauses

If you finish your dinner, you can go out to play.

Before question tags

You like him, don’t you?

In relative clauses???

Mr. Smith, who was born in 1902, worked in the coal mines of England.

Before and after adverbs

I’d, however, like to live abroad.

Actually, he was promoted.

Punctuation Mark

Usage

Example

Apostrophe (‘)

In contractions

It’s (it is), they’re (they are), I’d (I had / I would), can’t (can not), isn’t, aren’t, wouldn’t,​​ etc

With irregular plurals

Do’s and don’t’s, three M.P.’s

In the possessive

Jack’s book, Elena’s frog

Punctuation Mark

Usage

Example

Quotation marks (‘..’)

When we quote other people’s words

To emphasize words

Sometimes around titles of​​ books, movies, etc.

Punctuation Mark

Usage

Example

Colon (:)

Before explanations

Before quotations

Semi-colon (;)

Between grammatically separate sentences

Punctuation Mark

Usage

Example

Dash (–)

In informal writing to extend the sentence​​ with an extra thought

I’d love to see all the capital cities – Paris, London, Berlin, all of them.

Instead of a colon, or brackets

Punctuation Mark

Usage

Example

Ellipses (…)

To indicate omission or hesitation in speech

Square brackets []

To​​ explain words in a sentence

To indicate when a text is changed slightly