Terminology:Common punctuation symbols
Summary of the visual appearance and usage of common punctuation symbols in the English language:
| Symbol | Symbol name | Symbol design description |
|---|---|---|
’ | Apostrophe | The apostrophe is used to indicate either:
|
' | Apostrophe (default) | Any decent graphic designer will ensure this ugly default apostrophe is not used on printed material, but because keyboards don’t easily differentiate, the upright default version unfortunately seems to have won the online battle |
‘ | Quotation mark: left single | Also known as inverted commas or speech marks |
’ | Quotation mark: right single | |
“ | Quotation mark: left double | |
” | Quotation mark: right double | |
" | Quotation mark: double (default) | Any decent graphic designer will ensure this ugly default apostrophe is not used on printed material, but because keyboards don’t easily differentiate, the upright default version unfortunately seems to have won the online battle |
( ) | Brackets: round | Also known as parenthesis |
[ ] | Brackets: square | |
{ } | Brackets: curly | Also known as braces |
: | Colon | |
; | Semicolon | |
, | Comma | |
. | Full stop | Also known as period in United States of America |
- | Hyphen or minus sign | Although typographically different, the hyphen and minus sign are generally accepted as interchangeable:
|
– | Dash: en | The en dash is used for indicating inclusive numbers or date ranges and its width matches the capital letter “N” in the chosen font
|
— | Dash: em | The em dash is used as a strong break in a sentence and its width matches the capital letter “M” in the chosen font
|
_ | Underscore | |
… | Ellipsis | |
! | Exclamation mark | |
? | Question mark | |
‽ | Interrobang | Question mark and exclamation mark combined |
\ | Backslash | |
/ | Forward slash | Also known as a stroke or virgule, the forward slash character is used to represent “per” and to separate parts of text:
|
⁄ | Solidus | Line used to represent a fraction |