lexis4u: Punctuation Marks

Interlinked Thematic Vocabulary Unit Nº 071 Version 4

Main Definitions

punctuation marks |n| punctuation marks are special signs which help you understand what you’re reading. When you read out loud they also show you where to pause and when to raise or lower the tone of your voice. It helps other people understand what you are saying.
punctuation |n| the marks, such as period, comma, and parentheses, used in writing to separate sentences and their elements and to clarify meaning.
"I've never liked putting closing punctuation inside quotation marks."
mark |n| a line, figure, or symbol made as an indication or record of something.
"Here are some useful sites for anyone needing to display diacritical marks , mathematical symbols, etc."
symbol |n| a mark or character used as a conventional representation of an object, function, or process, e.g., the letter or letters standing for a chemical element or a character in musical notation.
sign |n| an object, quality, or event whose presence or occurrence indicates the probable presence or occurrence of something else.

Punctuation Marks List

( á é í ó ú ) accent / written accent |n| a mark indicating stress or some other distinction in pronunciation or value.
( & ) ampersand |n| is used to mean ‘and’. The shape of the symbol originated as a ligature for the Latin et (‘and’) – that is, it represents the merged ‘e’ and ‘t’. The name ampersand also represents a merge, although one that is perhaps more accidental.
( ¨ ) apostophe |n| the apostrophe probably causes more grief than all of the other punctuation marks put together! The problem nearly always seems to stem from not understanding that the apostrophe has two very different (and very important) uses in English: possession and contractions.
( * ) asterisk |n| a symbol used in text as a pointer to an annotation or footnote. Asterisk is pronounced with an -isk sound at the end, to match the spelling, and not as though it were spelled -ix.
( : ) colon |n| the colon expands on the sentence that precedes it, often introducing a list that demonstrates or elaborates whatever was previously stated.
( , ) comma |n| there are some general rules which you can apply when using the comma. However, you will find that in English there are many other ways to use the comma to add to the meaning of a sentence or to emphasise an item, point, or meaning. Although we are often taught that commas are used to help us add 'breathing spaces' to sentences they are, in fact, more accurately used to organise blocks of thought or logical groupings. Most people use commas to ensure that meaning is clear and, despite grammatical rules, will drop a comma if their meaning is retained without it.
(“ ”) inverted commas |n| the symbols “ ” or ‘ ’ that are put around a word or phrase to show that someone else has written or said it.
"He put the entire phrase in inverted commas to show that it wasn't his."
"Sick prisoners in the camp were 'cared for', in inverted commas, by guards, not nurses."
( — ) dash |n| the dash is a mark of punctuation used to set off a word or phrase after an independent clause or to set off a parenthetical remark (i.e., words, phrases, or clauses that interrupt a sentence). This mark of punctuation is technically known as an em dash or em rule. Don't confuse the dash (—) with the hyphen (-): the dash is longer.
"The dash is seductive," Ernest Gowers said in Plain Words: "it tempts the writer to use it as a punctuation-maid-of-all-work that saves him the trouble of choosing the right stop."
diacritic |n| indicating a difference in pronunciation.
"But it has now lost its appeal largely because a total of 136 syllables require additional phonetic signs or diacritic marks, making it a fairly cumbersome system for printing and typing."
() ellipsis |n| the omission from speech or writing of a word or words that are superfluous or able to be understood from contextual clues.
"O'Connor gives both analyses (intransitive verb and ellipsis of the object), and I think that the second one is probably right and the first one is probably not."
( ! ) exclamation mark / exclamation point |US| |n| The exclamation mark is used to express exasperation, astonishment, or surprise, or to emphasise a comment or short, sharp phrase. In professional or everyday writing, exclamation marks are used sparingly if at all.
"The exclamation point has one purpose, and that is to show exclamation. It allows the reader to feel excitement or alarm based on what it follows."
"Everyone must evacuate the building immediately! There is a fire! "
( - ) hyphen |n| the hyphen is used to join words together, and so it is perhaps unsurprising that the word hyphen comes from the Greek for ‘together’ (hyphen). This, in turn, comes from hypo ‘under’ + hen ‘one’. The hyphen is not the only punctuation mark that signifies togetherness; the plus symbol (+) has also been referred to as a hyphen on rare occasions, as has a short pause between two syllables in speaking and, more broadly, any small connecting link.
( ( ) ) parentheses / round brackets |US| |n| commonly known as brackets (particularly in British English), parentheses are those symbols used earlier in this sentence: the round brackets ( and ). Since the mid 16th century, parenthesis and parentheses have been used to mean ‘a word, clause, or sentence inserted as an explanation, aside, or afterthought into a passage with which it has not necessarily any grammatical connection’ (and, more generally, an afterthought or explanatory aside). The use of the term to refer to the round brackets themselves followed later, although only by a few decades, according to current Oxford English Dictionary (OED) research. The word itself ultimately comes from the Greek parentithenai, meaning ‘put in beside’.
"Mount Everest (8,848 m) is the highest mountain in the world."
"There are several books on the subject (see page 120)."
"He coined the term ‘hypnotism’ (from the Greek word hypnos meaning 'sleep') and practised it frequently."
( ? ) question mark |n| Use the question mark at the end of all direct questions. A question mark is a punctuation symbol (?) placed at the end of a sentence or phrase to indicate a direct question: She asked, "Are you happy to be home?" Also called an interrogation point, note of interrogation, or question point. As a general rule, question marks are not used at the end of indirect questions: She asked me if I was happy to be home.
"In A History of Writing (2003), Steven Roger Fischer notes that the question mark "first appeared around the eighth or ninth century in Latin manuscripts, but did not appear in English until 1587 with the publication of Sir Philip Sidney's Arcadia."
( " ) quotation marks |n| one of a pair of punctuation marks “ ” or ‘ ’ used chiefly to indicate the beginning and the end of a quotation in which the exact phraseology of another or of a text is directly cited.
stop |UK| / full stop |UK| / point |UK| / spot |UK| / dot |UK| / period |US| |n| You use it like a knife to cut the sentences to the required length. Generally, you can break up the sentences using the full stop at the end of a logical and complete thought that looks and sounds right to you.
semicolon |n| the semicolon is somewhere between a full stop and a comma. Semicolons can be used in English to join phrases and sentences that are thematically linked without having to use a conjunction. Semicolons can also be used instead of commas to separate the items in a list when the items themselves already contain commas.
( / ) slash / virgule 1 |n| the slash or virgule is a forward sloping line (/) that serves as a mark of punctuation. Also called an oblique, an oblique stroke, a diagonal, a solidus, a forward slash, and a separatrix. The slash is commonly used to: signify alternatives (and/or)
"Separate the parts of a fraction (2/3), date (1/1/2017), or Internet address (http:// . . ".)
"Mark line divisions in poetry quoted within running text."
"[T]he slash is a punctuation mark that sprouts in legal and commercial jargon ('and/or') and should not be used outside those linguistic ghettos."
"This calculator-converter provides online conversion of miles per hour to km/hour (mph to km/h) and conversion km/h to mi/h (kilometers/hour to miles/hour)."
( _ ) underscore 1 |n| a line drawn under a word or phrase for emphasis.

Information Technology Punctuation Marks

( @ ) at |n| this symbol has become very familiar, as (of course) every email address requires one. I have used the symbol itself for this paragraph’s heading, as the only name by which is it commonly known in English is at (or at symbol, at sign, etc.). Its technological lease of life was not its genesis, though; @ originated as a scribe’s quick way of writing the Latin word ad, meaning ‘at’, especially in lists of prices of commodities. It is still used in accounting and invoicing to signify ‘at the rate of’ (15 tables @ £35 = £525, for example), as well as various computer programming languages. While no other name for the symbol has secured wide use in English, various other languages have given names or nicknames to @. Many of these relate to the shape of the sign: a selection includes aapstert (Afrikaans, ‘monkey tail’), kukac (Hungarian, ‘worm’ or ‘maggot’), and malwen (Welsh, ‘snail’), although at is becoming more common as a universal name.
octothorp |n| even if you don’t think you know what an octothorp (or octothorpe) is, you’ll definitely recognize it; it’s another name for this symbol: #. Most commonly known as a hash (probably from hatch, meaning ‘shade an area with closely drawn parallel lines’, altered by folk etymology), # is also known as the pound sign or the number sign in American English, used to prefix weights or numbers. The symbol has come to prominence in recent years due to its use on Twitter and other social media to identify messages on a specific topic; the word or phrase preceded by the hash sign is known as a hashtag, and the sign itself is increasingly also known by this name.
( _ ) underscore 2 |n| on a computer or typewriter keyboard) a short horizontal line _ on the baseline.