Summary of common punctuation marks
The following table of commonly used English punctuation marks shows:
- a graphical representation of each punctation mark (black) with text block (grey)
- name of punctuation mark with link to more information
- very simple example sentence (more examples on individual pages)
| punctuation mark | name | example |
|---|---|---|
 |
full stop or period | I like English. |
 |
comma | I speak English, French and Thai. |
 |
semi-colon | I don’t often go swimming; I prefer to play tennis. |
 |
colon | You have two choices: finish the work today or lose the contract. |
 |
hyphen | This is a rather out-of-date book. |
 |
dash | In each town—London, Paris and Rome—we stayed in youth hostels. |
 |
question mark | Where is Shangri-La? |
 |
exclamation mark exclamation point (AmE) |
“Help!” she cried. “I can’t swim!” |
 |
slash, forward slash or oblique | Please press your browser’s Refresh/Reload button. |
 |
backslash | C:\Files\jo.doc |
 |
double quotation marks | “I love you,” she said. |
 |
single quotation marks | ‘I love you,’ she said. |
 |
apostrophe | This is John’s car. |
 |
underline | Have you read Harry Potter? |
 |
underscore | b_l@cia.gov |
 |
round brackets | I went to Bangkok (my favourite city) and stayed there for two weeks. |
 |
square brackets | The newspaper reported that the hostages [most of them French] had been released. |
 |
ellipsis mark | One happy customer wrote: “This is the best program…that I have ever seen.” |