punctuation mark

/ˈpʌŋ(k)tʃəˌweɪʃən mɑrk/

Other forms: punctuation marks

Periods, commas, and exclamation points are all punctuation marks — they're the characters and signs that help explain how to read and understand a written text.

Without punctuation marks, writing gets pretty confusing! Imagine a list of items without commas between them, or an entire book without a single period separating each sentence. Marks like semicolons, dashes, quotes, and question marks clarify your writing, but they also give it rhythm, emphasis, and personality. Punctuation comes from a Medieval Latin word meaning "to mark with points or dots" and its Latin root pungere, "to prick or pierce."

Definitions of punctuation mark

1. noun

   the marks used to clarify meaning by indicating separation of words into sentences and clauses and phrases
   synonyms: punctuation

   types:

   ampersand

   a punctuation mark (&) used to represent conjunction (and)

   apostrophe

   the mark (') used to indicate the omission of one or more letters from a printed word

   brace

   either of two punctuation marks ({ or }) used to enclose textual material

   bracket, square bracket

   either of two punctuation marks ([ or ]) used to enclose textual material

   angle bracket, bracket

   either of two punctuation marks ('<' or '>') used in computer programming and sometimes used to enclose textual material

   colon

   a punctuation mark (:) used after a word introducing a series or an example or an explanation (or after the salutation of a business letter)

   comma

   a punctuation mark (,) used to indicate the separation of elements within the grammatical structure of a sentence

   exclamation mark, exclamation point

   a punctuation mark (!) used to indicate emotion

   dash, hyphen

   a punctuation mark (-) used between parts of a compound word or between the syllables of a word when the word is divided at the end of a line of text

   parenthesis

   either of two punctuation marks ( or ) used to enclose textual material

   full point, full stop, period, point, stop

   a punctuation mark (.) placed at the end of a declarative sentence to indicate a full stop or after abbreviations

   interrogation point, question mark

   a punctuation mark (?) at the end of a sentence that is asking something

   inverted comma, quotation mark, quote

   a punctuation mark used to attribute the enclosed text to someone else

   semicolon

   a punctuation mark (`;') used to connect independent clauses; indicates a closer relation than does a period

   diagonal, separatrix, slash, solidus, stroke, virgule

   a punctuation mark (/) used to separate related items of information such as words, lines of text, or numbers

   swung dash

   a punctuation mark (~) used to replace a word in text or lists

   ellipsis

   a mark or marks, such as three dots, indicating that words have been omitted

   suspension point

   (usually plural) one of a series of points indicating that something has been omitted or that the sentence is incomplete

   single quote

   a single quotation mark

   double quotes

   a pair of quotation marks

   scare quote

   the use of quotation marks to indicate that it is not the authors preferred terminology

   type of:

   mark

   a written or printed symbol (as for punctuation)