![]() ![]() I invited my family (Mom, Dad, my sisters and Grandma) to come meet the new puppy.If that sounds confusing, seeing them in play visually may help: Square brackets are used two different ways: to add content to a quote in order to make the quote clearer and to mark a subordinate clause within another subordinate clause within parentheses. They come in two different forms:Ĭurly brackets, also known as braces or squiggly brackets: Bracketsīrackets might look like parentheses, but they aren’t parentheses. It was first introduced in 1968 and today it can be found in a wide variety of fonts. When your sentence calls for a question mark and an exclamation mark, the interrobang is the punctuation mark you need. Less-commonly used punctuation marks Interrobang Hyphens are used to create compound words like: Hyphens might look like dashes, but they aren’t dashes. Generally, this information is a tidbit of detail or a quick aside. When you need to add information to a sentence but the information doesn’t fit in gracefully, add it with parentheses. Communicate that a specific word is being used in a facetious disapproving way (The day-old pizza was “not that terrible.”).Signify a word within a sentence (Please refer to the champion as “winner.”).State the title of a work (His article, “Why Chocolate is the Best Flavor,” was published in Ice Cream magazine.).They look like “ ” and they can also be used to: Quotation marksĪs their name implies, quotation marks denote direct quotes. It looks like this: ⸗ and you only use it when you’re wrapping a hyphenated word onto the next line of text. We explain the situations that call for each kind of dash in our post on using colons, semicolons, and dashes in your writing.Īnd the rare one is known as a double hyphen. There are two different kinds of dash you probably use fairly regularly in your writing-and one you don’t. She asked herself how she could have missed the signs.I wondered why there was so much traffic.Indirect questions are actually declarative sentences, so they end with periods. Only use a question mark when you’re asking a direct question, like: They look like ? and they’re used to communicate that a sentence is a question. The question mark is another one-job punctuation mark. Exclamation points can be fun in casual messages and show the passion in a character’s voice when you’re writing fiction, but they’re usually not a good choice in any kind of formal, academic, or business writing. Just be careful not to overuse them-and in some kinds of writing, it’s best to leave them out entirely. Much like the period, the exclamation point has one job: to make sentences exciting! You read that sentence in an eager, high-energy voice because it ended with an exclamation point : ! However, the only time an apostrophe is used to pluralize a noun is when the noun being pluralized is a lowercase letter. For example:ĭon’t use them when you’re referring to a decade numerically (correct: the 1990s, incorrect: the 1990’s)ĭon’t use them when the last letter follows an apostrophe (correct: don’ts, incorrect: don’t’s)ĭon’t use them when describing a group of people (correct: the Chens are coming to dinner, incorrect: the Chen’s are coming to dinner) One last note on apostrophes: Most of the time, they are not used to pluralize nouns. Combining words into contractions (don’t, she’ll, weren’t)Īnd more casually, apostrophes are used to shorten words (government becomes gov’t and the 1970s becomes the ’70s) and in quotes to show the speaker has shortened a word, for example: We looked and found nothin’. ![]() Creating possessive nouns (Jim’s house, the Kelleys’ car).The apostrophe is a busy little punctuation mark. This is what can make them tricky-the points where you’d pause in a spoken sentence aren’t always where you’d use a comma in a written sentence. A comma indicates a pause in a sentence, either between phrases, clauses, or items in a list. They’re also among the most commonly misused punctuation marks. CommasĬommas are one of the most common punctuation marks. This evolved into ellipses’ use in casual conversation, like text messages and social media posts, where they’re frequently used to indicate pauses. In fiction and poetry, they’re also used to build suspense, show a speaker’s voice is trailing off or faltering, or represent incomplete thoughts. Īn ellipsis is used to show that information has been omitted from a quote, usually to shorten it. EllipsesĮllipses look like a set of three periods together. It has one job: to end a declarative sentence. The period, also known as the full stop, looks like this. When it comes to punctuation marks, you don’t get any more basic than periods. Grammarly helps you communicate confidently Write with Grammarly Basic and common punctuation marks Periods ![]()
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