English punctuation

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Punctuation in the English language helps the reader to understand a sentence through visual means other than just the letters of the alphabet. [1] English punctuation has two complementary aspects: phonological punctuation, linked to how the sentence can be read aloud, particularly to pausing; [2] and grammatical punctuation, linked to the structure of the sentence. [3] In popular discussion of language, incorrect punctuation is often seen as an indication of lack of education and of a decline of standards. [4]

Contents

Variants

British and American styles

The two broad styles of punctuation in English are often called British (typically used in the UK, Ireland, and most of the Commonwealth of Nations) and American (also common in Canada and places with a strong American influence on local English, as in the Philippines). These two styles differ mainly in the way in which they handle quotation marks with adjacent punctuation, and the use or omission of the full point (period) with contraction abbreviations. (See subsections below on Quotation marks and Full stop, full point or period.)

Open and closed punctuation

The terms open and closed punctuation have been applied to minimizing versus comprehensively including punctuation, respectively, aside from any dialectal trends. Closed punctuation is used in scholarly, literary, general business, and "everyday" writing. [5] Open style dominates in text messaging and other short-form online communication, where more formal or "closed" punctuation can be misinterpreted as aloofness or even hostility. [6]

Open punctuation

Open punctuation eliminates the need for a period at the end of a stand-alone statement, in an abbreviation or acronym (including personal initials and post-nominal letters, and time-of-day abbreviations), as well as in components of postal addresses. This style also eschews optional commas in sentences, including the serial comma. Open punctuation also frequently drops apostrophes. [7]

Open punctuation is used primarily in certain forms of business writing, such as letterhead and envelope addressing, some business letters, and résumés and their cover letters. [5]

Closed punctuation

In contrast, closed punctuation uses commas and periods in a strict manner. [5]

Closed style is common in presentations, especially in bulleted and numbered lists. It is also frequently used in advertising, marketing materials, news headlines, and signage. [8]

Usage of different punctuation marks or symbols

Frequency

One analysis found the average frequencies for English punctuation marks, based on 723,000 words of assorted texts, to be as follows (as of 2013, but with some text corpora dating to 1998 and 1987): [9]

NameGlyphFrequency
(per 1000 words)
Full stop (period).65.3
Comma,61.6
Double quotation mark"26.7
Apostrophe / single quotation mark'24.3
Hyphen-15.3
Question mark? 5.6
Colon: 3.4
Exclamation mark! 3.3
Semicolon; 3.2

Apostrophe

The apostrophe ⟨’⟩, sometimes called inverted comma in British English, is used to mark possession, as in "John's book", and to mark letters omitted in contractions, such as you're for you are.

Brackets

Brackets ( [...], (...),{...},⟨...⟩ ) are used for parenthesis, explanation or comment: such as "John Smith (the elder, not his son)..."

Colon

The colon ( : ) is used to start an enumeration, as in Her apartment needed a few things: a toaster, a new lamp, and a nice rug. It is used between two clauses when the second clause otherwise clarifies the first, as in I can barely keep my eyes open: I hardly got a wink of sleep.

Comma

The comma ( , ) is used to disambiguate the meaning of sentences, by providing boundaries between clauses and phrases. For example, "Man, without his cell phone, is nothing" (emphasizing the importance of cell phone) and "Man: without, his cell phone is nothing" (emphasizing the importance of men) have greatly different meanings, as do "eats shoots and leaves" (to mean "consumes plant growths") and "eats, shoots and leaves" (to mean "eats firstly, fires a weapon secondly, and leaves the scene thirdly"). [4]

The comma is also used to group digits in numerals and dates: "2,000" and "January 7, 1985". In many other languages, the comma is used as the decimal separator.

Dash and hyphen

The dash ( ‒,–,—,― ) and hyphen or hyphen-minus ( ‐ ) is used:

Ellipsis

An ellipsis (...,…,. . .) is used to mark omitted text or when a sentence trails off.

Exclamation mark

The exclamation mark ( ! ) is used to mark an exclamation.

Full point, full stop, or period

The character known as the full point or full stop in British and Commonwealth English and as the period in North American English ( . ) serves multiple purposes. As the full stop, it is used to mark the end of a sentence. It is also used, as the full point, to indicate abbreviation, including of names as initials: [10]

Dwight D. Eisenhower's home in Gettysburg, Pa., was not very far from Washington, D.C.

The frequency and specifics of the latter use vary widely, over time and regionally. For example, these marks are usually left out of acronyms and initialisms today, and in many British publications they are omitted from contractions such as Dr for Doctor, where the abbreviation begins and ends with the same letters as the full word.

Another use of this character, as the decimal point, is found in mathematics and computing (where it is often nicknamed the "dot"), dividing whole numbers from decimal fractions, as in 2,398.45. In many languages, the roles of the comma and decimal point are reversed, with the comma serving as the decimal separator and the dot used as a thousands separator (though a thin space is sometimes used for the latter purpose, especially in technical writing, regardless what the decimal separator is). In computing, the dot is used as a delimiter more broadly, as site and file names ("wikipedia.org", "192.168.0.1" "document.txt"), and serves special functions in various programming and scripting languages.

Question marks

The question mark ( ? ) is used to mark the end of a sentence which is a question.

Quotation marks

Quotation marks ( ‘...’,“...”,'...',"..." ) are used in pairs to set off quotation, with two levels for distinguishing nested quotations: single and double. North American publishers of English texts tend to favour double quotation marks for the primary quotation, switching to single for any quote-within-a-quote, while British and Commonwealth publishers may use either single or double for primary quotation, also switching to the alternative for any nested. Further nesting (quote-within-a-quote-within-a-quote) reverts to the primary marks, and so forth.

Question marks, exclamation points, semicolons and colons are placed inside the quotation marks when they apply only to the quoted material; if they syntactically apply to the sentence containing or introducing the material, they are placed outside the marks. In British publications (and those throughout the Commonwealth of Nations more broadly), periods and commas are most often treated the same way, but usage varies widely. In American publications, periods and commas are usually placed inside the quotation marks regardless. The American system, also known as typographer's quotation, is also common in Canadian English, and in fiction broadly.

A third system, known as logical quotation, is strict about not including terminal punctuation within the quotation marks unless it was also found in the quoted material. [11] [12] Some writers conflate logical quotation and the common British style (which actually permits some variation, such as replacement of an original full stop with a comma or vice versa, to suit the needs of the quoting sentence, rather than moving the non-original punctuation outside the quotation marks). For example, The Chicago Manual of Style , 14th ed.: "The British style is strongly advocated by some American language experts. Whereas there clearly is some risk with question marks and exclamation points, there seems little likelihood that readers will be misled concerning the period or comma." [13] [ unreliable source ] It goes on to recommend "British" or logical quotation for fields such as linguistics, literary criticism, and technical writing, and also notes its use in philosophy texts.

Semicolon

The semicolon ( ; ) is used to separate two independent but related clauses: My wife would like tea; I would prefer coffee. The semicolon is also used to separate list items when the list items contain commas: "She saw three men: Jamie, who came from New Zealand; John, the milkman's son; and George, a gaunt kind of man."

Slash

The slash or stroke or solidus ( /,⁄ ) is often used to indicate alternatives, such as "his/her", or two equivalent meanings or spellings, such as "grey/gray". The slash is used in certain set phrases, such as the conjunction "and/or".

Related Research Articles

Punctuation marks are marks indicating how a piece of written text should be read and, consequently, understood. The oldest known examples of punctuation marks were found in the Mesha Stele from the 9th century BC, consisting of points between the words and horizontal strokes between sections. The alphabet-based writing began with no spaces, no capitalization, no vowels, and with only a few punctuation marks, as it was mostly aimed at recording business transactions. Only with the Greek playwrights did the ends of sentences begin to be marked to help actors know when to make a pause during performances. Punctuation includes space between words and the other, historically or currently used, signs.

The comma, is a punctuation mark that appears in several variants in different languages. It has the same shape as an apostrophe or single closing quotation mark in many typefaces, but it differs from them in being placed on the baseline of the text. Some typefaces render it as a small line, slightly curved or straight, but inclined from the vertical. Other fonts give it the appearance of a miniature filled-in figure 9 on the baseline.

The colon, :, is a punctuation mark consisting of two equally sized dots aligned vertically. A colon often precedes an explanation, a list, or a quoted sentence. It is also used between hours and minutes in time, between certain elements in medical journal citations, between chapter and verse in Bible citations, and, in the US, for salutations in business letters and other formal letter writing.

In English writing, quotation marks or inverted commas, also known informally as quotes, talking marks, speech marks, quote marks, quotemarks or speechmarks, are punctuation marks placed on either side of a word or phrase in order to identify it as a quotation, direct speech or a literal title or name. Quotation marks may be used to indicate that the meaning of the word or phrase they surround should be taken to be different from that typically associated with it, and are often used in this way to express irony. They are also sometimes used to emphasise a word or phrase, although this is usually considered incorrect.

The semicolon; is a symbol commonly used as orthographic punctuation. In the English language, a semicolon is most commonly used to link two independent clauses that are closely related in thought, such as when restating the preceding idea with a different expression. When a semicolon joins two or more ideas in one sentence, those ideas are then given equal rank. Semicolons can also be used in place of commas to separate items in a list, particularly when the elements of the list themselves have embedded commas.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Decimal separator</span> Numerical symbol

A decimal separator is a symbol used to separate the integer part from the fractional part of a number written in decimal form. Different countries officially designate different symbols for use as the separator. The choice of symbol also affects the choice of symbol for the thousands separator used in digit grouping.

In writing, a space is a blank area that separates words, sentences, syllables and other written or printed glyphs (characters). Conventions for spacing vary among languages, and in some languages the spacing rules are complex. Inter-word spaces ease the reader's task of identifying words, and avoid outright ambiguities such as "now here" vs. "nowhere". They also provide convenient guides for where a human or program may start new lines.

Estonian orthography is the system used for writing the Estonian language and is based on the Latin alphabet. The Estonian orthography is generally guided by phonemic principles, with each grapheme corresponding to one phoneme.

In written English usage, a comma splice or comma fault is the use of a comma to join two independent clauses. For example:

It is nearly half past five, we cannot reach town before dark.

<i>Eats, Shoots & Leaves</i> 2003 non-fiction book on punctuation by Lynne Truss

Eats, Shoots & Leaves: The Zero Tolerance Approach to Punctuation is a non-fiction book written by Lynne Truss, the former host of BBC Radio 4's Cutting a Dash programme. In the book, published in 2003, Truss bemoans the state of punctuation in the United Kingdom and the United States and describes how rules are being relaxed in today's society. Her goal is to remind readers of the importance of punctuation in the English language by mixing humour and instruction.

Punctuation marks are one or two part graphical marks used in writing, denoting tonal progress, pauses, sentence type, abbreviations, et cetera.

The orthography of the Greek language ultimately has its roots in the adoption of the Greek alphabet in the 9th century BC. Some time prior to that, one early form of Greek, Mycenaean, was written in Linear B, although there was a lapse of several centuries between the time Mycenaean stopped being written and the time when the Greek alphabet came into use.

Quotation marks are punctuation marks used in pairs in various writing systems to identify direct speech, a quotation, or a phrase. The pair consists of an opening quotation mark and a closing quotation mark, which may or may not be the same glyph. Quotation marks have a variety of forms in different languages and in different media.

Japanese punctuation includes various written marks, which differ from those found in European languages, as well as some not used in formal Japanese writing but frequently found in more casual writing, such as exclamation and question marks.

Writing systems that use Chinese characters also include various punctuation marks, derived from both Chinese and Western sources. Historically, judou annotations were often used to indicate the boundaries of sentences and clauses in text. The use of punctuation in Written Chinese only became mandatory during the 20th century, due to Western influence. Unlike modern punctuation, judou marks were added by scholars for pedagogical purposes and were not viewed as integral to the text. Texts were therefore generally transmitted without judou. In most cases, this practice did not interfere with the interpretation of a text, although it occasionally resulted in ambiguity.

Hebrew punctuation is similar to that of English and other Western languages, Modern Hebrew having imported additional punctuation marks from these languages in order to avoid the ambiguities sometimes occasioned by the relative lack of such symbols in Biblical Hebrew.

For the Korean language, South Korea mainly uses a combination of East Asian and European punctuation, while North Korea uses a little more of the East Asian punctuation style.

The full stop, period, or full point. is a punctuation mark used for several purposes, most often to mark the end of a declarative sentence.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Esperanto Braille</span> Braille alphabet of the Esperanto language

The Esperanto language has a dedicated braille alphabet. One Esperanto braille magazine, Esperanta Ligilo, has been published since 1904, and another, Aŭroro, since 1920.

The compound point is an obsolete typographical construction. Keith Houston reported that this form of punctuation doubling, which involved the comma dash (,—), the semicolon dash (;—), the colon dash, or "dog's bollocks" (:—), and less often the stop-dash (.—) arose in the seventeenth century, citing examples from as early as 1622. More traditionally, these paired forms of punctuation seem most often to have been called (generically) compound points and (specifically) semicolon dash, comma dash, colon dash, and point dash.

References

  1. ↑ Coulmas, F. (1996). The Blackwell Encyclopedia of Writing Systems. Oxford: Blackwell.
  2. ↑ Parkes, M. B. (1992). Pause and Effect: An Introduction to the History of Punctuation in the West. Aldershot: Scolar Press.
  3. ↑ Halliday, M. A. K. (1985). Spoken and Written Language. Oxford University Press.
  4. 1 2 Truss, Lynne (2003). Eats, Shoots & Leaves: The Zero Tolerance Approach to Punctuation . London: Profile Books. ISBN   1861976127.
  5. 1 2 3 Walton, Ashley. "Open vs. Closed Punctuation". Synonym. Leaf Group. Retrieved 21 January 2017.
  6. ↑ Collister, Lauren (19 July 2016). "Why does using a period in a text message make you sound insincere or angry?". The Conversation . Retrieved 17 January 2017.
  7. ↑ Malady, Matthew J. X. (23 May 2013). "Are Apostrophes Necessary?". Slate . Retrieved 17 January 2017.
  8. ↑ See for example: Harrison, Kim (21 February 2015). "Bringing a headline to a full stop". CuttingEdgePR.com. Perth, Western Australia: Cutting Edge Insights. Archived from the original on 17 January 2018. Retrieved 17 January 2017.
  9. ↑ Cook, Vivian J. (2013). "Frequencies for English Punctuation Marks" – via VivianCook.uk. Excerpt from Cook, Vivian J. (2013). "Standard punctuation and the punctuation of the street". In Pawlak, M.; Aronin, L. (eds.). Essential Topics in Applied Linguistics and Multilingualism. Springer International. pp. 267–290..
  10. ↑ Irwin Feigenbaum The Grammar Handbook 1985 p303 "... period after initials in a name and after other abbreviations. (103) Dwight D. Eisenhower's home in Gettysburg, Pa., was not very far from Washington, D.C. In a direct quotation, 3 periods are used to show that a word or words have been
  11. ↑ "Journal of Irish and Scottish Studies" (PDF). University of Aberdeen, Scotland: Research Institute of Irish and Scottish Studies. 2008. Archived from the original (PDF) on 10 April 2011. Retrieved 9 September 2015. Punctuation marks are placed inside the quotation marks only if the sense of the punctuation is part of the quotation; this system is referred to as logical quotation.
  12. ↑ Nichol, Mark (6 June 2011). "Logical Punctuation Isn't the Logical Choice". Daily Writing Tips. Retrieved 4 September 2015.
  13. ↑ Wilbers, Stephen. "Frequently Asked Questions Concerning Punctuation". Wilbers.com. self-published. Retrieved 17 January 2017.

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