Punctuation

What is a Hyphen? A hyphen is a small horizontal line used to combine two or more words to form a compound word.  Hyphens are often confused with em dashes and en dashes. The differences between the three are as follows:  Hyphen (-):  Example: “I’m a mother of a seven-month-old infant,” said Sandra. En dash […]

A period is a dot-shaped punctuation mark. It is one of the most frequently used ones in the English language. The symbol was introduced by Greek librarian Aristophanes during the 3rd century BCE. After its introduction, the period was mostly placed at the top edge of the end of a sentence. However, by the 9th […]

What Are Brackets?  From periods to colons and hyphens, punctuation marks play an important role in writing. Brackets are commonly used punctuation marks that appear in pairs. The first bracket in a pair is called an opening bracket, and the second one is called a closing bracket. There are different types of brackets used in […]

What Are Scare Quotes? Scare quotes are punctuation used to represent ironic, skeptic, or other nonstandard usage of terms. Although different writing style guides define scare quotes differently, the basic function of such quotes is to suggest that the words and phrases within the quotes mean something different than what they’re supposed to mean. Below […]

8:07 PM, You: Hey, what’s up? How’d the game go? Did you make any three-pointers, assists, or game-winning shots? 8:10 PM, Cameron: hey buddy the game went great we won i scored a ton of points and made a game winning three pointer at the end im happy with my performance !!! 8:11 PM, You: […]

For their size, commas are deceptively tricky. Even experienced writers still get tripped up by the measly comma, that little squiggly punctuation mark that inserts a mid-sentence pause after listed items, before conjunctions, in compound and complex sentences, and in a variety of other grammatical situations.  Even among those with a lot of writing experience, […]

We’ve all sent or received texts like these: 8:07 PM: I am hoping you will come pick me up after practice? 3:16 PM: Yes, will you be waiting outside. 3:29 PM: I will be. Coach just asked if I can stay after to help clean up? But what do all these texts have in common? […]

As Lauren planned the final semester of her master’s degree program, she asked herself an age-old question: Should I do a paper, or a project? At first consideration, the rules about when to capitalize, or when to use a capital letter to begin a word, seem elementary: capitalize a letter when starting a sentence. But […]

English spelling can be quite convoluted to master as it is, given the gap between it and the pronunciation of the words. Adding to that confusion is the variation in spellings for the same words in America and the UK. The right version is likely to depend on which side of the Pond the writer […]

The apostrophe (’) is one of the most widely used punctuation marks in the English language. Everyone who knows the language is sure to have used them extensively. Yet, situations often arise while writing, regarding the usage of apostrophes, that can cause much confusion, even in veteran writers.  How Are Apostrophes Used? The two commonly […]

Colons and semicolons are two kinds of punctuation marks. The colon (:) consists of two periods, one above the other, and is preceded by an independent clause (a clause that can work as a standalone sentence) though not followed by one. For example: She kept saying: “I’m really hungry.” They wanted to visit three European […]

The usage of capital letters is one of the elementary aspects of English punctuation. And rules for capitalization are among the first that most students of the language learn. However, capitalization can still get quite tricky, and confusions about whether capital letters are appropriate or right in certain situations often arise even in seasoned English […]