Punctuation

The period gives your thought a hard stop before beginning a brand new, self-sustaining sentence.

The number one rule? Don’t overuse them. Use your words to imply excitement, don’t rely on an exclamation point.

Only use one when you’re actually asking a question. Then be sure to answer it.

An apostrophe should either indicate a contraction or indicate ownership. It does not make singular words plural.

If you’re not sure about adding a comma, read your sentence out loud. If you naturally pause anywhere, it could probably use a comma there.

This replacement for ​“and” should only be used in official names, nav­i­ga­tion­al labels and short, title case headlines.

Did you know em dashes, en dashes and hyphens aren’t inter­change­able? They each have different purposes. We’ll teach you what they are.

These can be tricky to use correctly. Read this section to learn when they’re necessary and when they aren’t.

If you’re finding yourself wanting to use a semicolon, read this section first. Chances are you probably don’t need one, or you could use an em dash instead.

Information included in parentheses is sup­ple­men­tary to the rest of the sentence, like an example of what you just described or an additional clarification.

It’s right in the name — quotation marks go around a quote, which is something someone said. But they don’t stop there.

Use this punctuation when you need to condense a direct quote, not when you need to add emphasis.

When we need to separate distinct pieces of information on a single line, we use the ​“middle dot” instead of a pipe or a shift in typography.