1. Use a period [ . ] at the end of a sentence that makes a statement. There is no space between the last letter and the period. Use one space between the period and the first letter of the next sentence. See Quotation Marks and Parentheses, below, for special placement considerations with those marks.

    Use a period at the end of an indirect question. The teacher asked why Maria had left out the easy exercises.

    Use a period with abbreviations: Dr. Espinoza arrived from Washington, D.C., at 6 p.m. Notice that when the period ending the abbreviation comes at the end of a sentence, it will also suffice to end the sentence. Acronyms do not require periods: NATO, NOW, VISTA.

  2. Use a question mark [ ? ] at the end of a direct question. It is considered bad form to use a question mark in combination with other marks, although that is often done in informal prose in an attempt to convey complex tones: What!?

  3. Use an exclamation point [ ! ] at the end of an emphatic declaration, interjection, or command. "No!" he yelled. "Do it now!" In academic prose, exclamation points are used rarely, if at all, and the limitations on its use are even more stringent in newspaper writing.

  4. Use a colon [ : ] before a list or an explanation that is preceded by a clause that can stand by itself. Think of the colon as a gate, inviting one to go on, as in "There is only one thing left to do now: confess while you still have time." You nearly always have a sense of what is going to follow or be on the other side of the colon.

  5. Use a semicolon [ ; ] (1) to help sort out a monster list (There were citizens from Bangor, Maine; Hartford, Connecticut; Boston, Massachusetts; and Newport, Rhode Island. OR We had four professors on our committee: Peter Wursthorn, Professor Mathematics; Ronald Pepin, Professor of English; Cynthia Greenblatt, Professor of Education; and Nada Light, Professor of Nursing.)

    (2) to separate closely related independent clauses, as in "My grandmother seldom goes to bed this early; she's afraid she'll miss out on something." The semicolon allows the writer to imply a relationship between ideas without actually stating that relationship. (Instead of saying because my grandmother is afraid she'll miss out on something, I have implied the because. Thus the reader is involved in the development of an idea -- a clever way of engaging the reader's attention.

  6. Using the hyphen [ - ] became a lot easier with word-processors that either do word-breaks at the right-hand margins for you or simply eliminate that as something you have to do in writing. The APA Publication Manual insists that you not break words at line-endings in any case. The rules for hyphenating at line-breaks are so complicated that only a computer can keep track of them. If you're ever in a situation where you have to hyphenate at line-breaks, go to a dictionary -- unless you can explain why you would break experience between the e and the r, that is, and then you can do whatever you want.

    Hyphens have other uses: (a) creating compound words, particularly modifiers before nouns (the well-known actor, my six-year-old daughter; (b) writing numbers twenty-one to ninety-nine and fractions (five-eighths, one-fourth); (c) creating compounds on-the-fly for fly-by-night organizations. There is no space between a hyphen and the letter on either side of it.

  7. Use a dash (or two hyphens [ -- ] on most typewriters) or dashes as a super-comma or set of super-commas, as in "All four of them -- Bob, Jeffrey, Jason, and Brett -- did well in college." Do not use dashes to set apart material when commas would do the work for you! Usually, there are no spaces between the dash and the letters on either side of a dash, although the dash is frequently shown that way in documents prepared for the World Wide Web for typographical and aesthetic reasons (because the WWW author has little control over line-breaks).

  8. Use parentheses [ ( ) ] to include material that you want to de-emphasize or that wouldn't normally fit into the flow of your text but you want to include nonetheless. If the material within parentheses appears within a sentence, do not use a capital letter or end-mark to punctuate that material, even if the material is itself a complete sentence. If the material within your parentheses is written as a separate sentence (not included within another sentence), punctuate it as if it were a separate sentence.
    Thirty-five years after his death, Robert Frost (we remember him at Kennedy's inauguration) remains America's favorite poet.
    Thirty-five years after his death, Robert Frost remains America's favorite poet. (We remember him at Kennedy's inauguration.)
    If the material is important enough, use some other means of including it within your text -- even if it means writing another sentence. Note that parentheses tend to de-emphasize text whereas dashes tend to make material seem even more important.

  9. Use brackets [ [ ] ] in the following situations: (1) You can use them to include explanatory words or phrases within quoted language: "Espinoza, the new soccer coach [at Notre Dame Academy] is going to be a real winner." If you are quoting material and you've had to change the capitalization of a word or change a pronoun to make the material fit into your sentence, enclose that changed letter or word(s) within brackets: "Espinoza charged her former employer with "falsification of [her] coaching record." Also within quotations, you could enclose [sic] within brackets to show that misspelled words or inappropriately used words are not your typos or blunders but are part of an accurately rendered quotation: "Reporters found three mispelings [sic] in the report." (It is very bad manners, however, to use this device to show that another writer is a lousy speller or otherwise unlettered.)

    (2) You can use brackets to include parenthetical material inside parenthetical material: "Chernwell was poet laureate of Bermuda (a largely honorary position [unpaid]) for ten years." Be kind to your reader, however, and use this device sparingly.

  10. An ellipsis [ . . . ] proves to be a handy device when you're quoting material and you want to omit some words. The ellipsis consists of three evenly spaced dots (periods) with spaces between the ellipsis and surrounding letters or other marks. Let's take the sentence, "The ceremony honored twelve brilliant athletes from the Caribbean who were visiting the U.S." and leave out "from the Caribbean who were":
    The ceremony honored twelve brilliant athletes . . . visiting the U.S.

    If the omission comes at the end of a sentence, the ellipsis will be placed
    after the period, making a total of four dots. . . . See how that works?

    The ellipsis can also be used to indicate a pause in the flow of a sentence and is especially useful in quoted speech.
    Juan thought and thought . . . and then thought some more.
    "I'm wondering . . ." Juan said, bemused.

    The plural of ellipsis is ellipses (in case someone asks).

  11. We use an apostrophe [ ' ] to create possessive forms, contractions, and some plurals. The apostrophe shows where a letter or letters have been left out of a contracted verb:
    I am = I'myou are = you'reshe is = she's it is = it's
    do not = don'tshe would = she'dhe would have = he would've
    let us = let'swho is = who'sshe will = she'llthey had = they'd

    In possessives, the placement of the apostrophe depends on whether the noun that shows possession is singular or plural. Generally, if the noun is singular, the apostrophe goes before the s. The witch's broom. If the noun is plural, the apostrophe goes after the s: The witches' brooms. However, if the word is pluralized without an s, the apostrophe comes before the s: He entered the men's room with an armload of children's clothing. If you create a possessive with a phrase like of the witches, you will use no apostrophe: the brooms of the witches.

    Remember that it's means it is. Confusing it's with its, the possessive of it, is perhaps the most common error in writing.

    An apostrophe is also used to form some plurals, especially the plural of letters. Raoul got four A's last term. It is no longer considered correct or necessary to create the plural of numbers or abbreviations with an apostrophe. He wrote during the 1930s. There are fifteen PhDs on our faculty.

  12. Use quotation marks [ " " ] to set off material that represents quoted or spoken language. Quotation marks also set off the titles of things that do not normally stand by themselves: short stories, poems, and articles. Usually, a quotation is set off from the rest of the sentence by a comma; however, the typography of quoted material can become quite complicated. Here is one simple rule to remember: In the United States, periods and commas go inside the quote marks regardless of logic. Thus, you would write: My favorite poem is Robert Frost's "Design." But marks other than periods and commas follow the logic that the quotation marks accompany the text being quoted. Thus, you would write: What do you think of Robert Frost's "Design"? and I love "Design"; however, my favorite is "Birches."

    Remember that quotation marks always travel in pairs!

    Be careful not to use quotation marks in an attempt to emphasize a word (the kind of thing you see in grocery store windows -- Big "Sale" Today!). Underline or italicize that word instead. (The quotation marks will probably suggest that you are using that word in a special or peculiar way and that you didn't really mean it.)

  13. A slash or virgule [ / ] is used to indicate a choice between the words it separates. "Using the pass/fail option backfired on her; she could've gotten an A." It can be translated as or and should not be used where the word or could not be used in its place. To avoid gender problems with pronouns, some writers use he/she, his/her, and him/her. Most authorities despise that construction and urge writers either to pluralize (to they, their, them, when appropriate) or to use he or she, etc. instead. Notice there is no space between the slash and the letters on either side.

    There is a space when the slash is used to indicate a line-break in quoted poetry, however: "The woods are lovely, dark, and deep / but I have promises to keep." (This way of quoting poetry is limited to four or five lines of verse, within the normal flow of text.)

    When using slashes in a Uniform Resource Locator (URL) for a World Wide Web address (webster.commnet.edu/HP/pages/darling/grammar.htm), be especially sure not to include spaces and not to confuse the slash with its backward cousin, \ , used to show file locations on drives.