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Need to brush up on your English skills? Take our quiz for a quick refresher on every major type of punctuation! 1. Periods 2. Commas 3. Apostrophes 4. Quotation Marks 5. Colons 6. Semicolons 7. Hyphens 8. Dashes and Slashes 9. Parentheses and Brackets 10. Ellipses 11. Questions and Exclamations Correct the following sentences using Read More

Exclamation marks are added to sentences in order to give them emphasis. They imbue the words with strong emotion, so always use them sparingly for a mature tone. To avoid any errors in your writing, here is how to use exclamation marks correctly: 1. Adding Emphasis 2. Tone and Style 1. Adding Emphasis Exclamation marks Read More

As their name suggests, question marks are used in English to mark questions. However, they also have another use in formal writing: to convey editorial uncertainty. To avoid any errors in your writing, here is how to use question marks correctly: 1. Direct Questions 2. Indirect Questions 3. Editorial Uncertainty 1. Direct Questions Whenever you Read More

Ellipses are written as three dots in a row (…). In reported speech, they are used to either provide a slight pause or to show that the speaker’s words are trailing off. In quoted material, ellipses have a different function: to indicate that words (or even multiple sentences) have been left out from the original Read More

Parentheses—which are often called brackets—are used to enclose additional information within a sentence or paragraph. There is only a handful of rules that you need to know when using them, but the main one is that they are always, always used in pairs. The same goes for square brackets, which we will also discuss. To Read More

Dashes come in two main forms: en dashes and em dashes. These perform several functions, from conveying the relationship between two words or phrases, to indicating interruptions, omissions, and even parenthetical information. As is so often the case, there are differences in how dashes are used in American and British English, so these will require Read More

Slashes have a variety of different uses: to list alternatives, to separate numbers in a fraction or ratio, to indicate ranges and certain abbreviations, and to present lines of poetry in a readable way. To avoid any errors in your writing, here is how to use slashes correctly: 1. Listing Alternatives 2. Fractions and Ratios Read More

Hyphens are used to join words or elements that are very closely related to each other. This is done to indicate that the words should be read as a single concept or unit. You will often see this when they serve as joined modifiers before a noun. Although there are several main rules for using Read More