Punctuation

This branch covers marks that separate, join and compress parts of written language. It divides by the mark or group of related marks: commas, sentence stops and asides, apostrophes, hyphens, and ranges and slashes. Grammar, capitalisation, choosing a style manual and resolving unsettled usage questions belong to neighbouring branches and topics.

• Commas: what a sentence includes, excludes and joins — identifying and additional information, adjectives, introductory material, clauses, lists, shared phrases and direct address
• Stops, brackets, dashes and spacing — sentence endings, semicolons, colons, parentheses, paired dashes, tone and em-dash spacing
• Apostrophes: possession, contraction and plurals — possessives, contractions, plural abbreviations and letters, possessives before -ing forms, and descriptive names
• Hyphens and compound words — compound modifiers, prefixes, compound spellings, verb-derived nouns, noun modifiers and nonbreaking hyphens
• Ranges and slashes — range wording and endpoints, slash ambiguity and clearer replacements