As we celebrated National Punctuation Day on 24th September, I thought it would be relevant to investigate punctuation marks and their beginnings. After all as writer’s we use them every day! There are fourteen punctuation marks in common usage.

We have Aristophanes of Byzantium, the librarian of the Museum at Alexandria around 200 BC,  for the invention of a formal system of punctuation. He designed accents primarily for actors to aid pronunciation with critical signs, marks of quantity, accents, breathings, etc. which then became the Greek system of punctuation.

Comma – separates words, clauses, or ideas within a sentence.

Full Stop – at the end of a written line and directly following a preceding character without a space.

Colon – introduces an element or series of elements to illustrate or amplify information preceding it.

Ellipsis – shows an omission of words, represents a pause, or suggests there’s something left unsaid.

Semicolon – commonly used to join two independent clauses without using a coordinating conjunction like ‘and’.

Apostrophe – Either used as a possessive, or a contraction. A contraction is a shortened form of a word, or group of words that omits certain letters or sounds. Such as “He would” = “He’d.” “I have” = “I’ve.” “They are” = “They’re.” For most singular nouns, add -’s: The dog’s leash, or the writer’s desk. Or plural nouns, the dogs’ leashes, or the writers’ desks.

Hyphen – a punctuation mark that’s used to join words or parts of words. However, it is not interchangeable with the various dashes.

Dash –  longer than a hyphen commonly used to indicate a range or a pause.

Quotation Marks – show direct quotes, dialogue, and certain titles or otherwise to set aside words in text.

Question Mark – to indicate that a sentence is a question.

Exclamation Mark – used at the end of a declarative sentence. (This particular punctuation mark should be used sparingly.)

Slash – the only one used in writing is the forward slash. (A back slash is used in computer programming.)

Parentheses and brackets – used to set apart certain words and sentences. Parentheses, ( ), are used to add extra information in text, while brackets, [ ], are used mainly in quotations to add extra information that wasn’t in the original quote.

Which mark do you have the most difficulty with?