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Punctuation marks are written symbols that do not correspond to either phonemes (sounds) of a spoken language nor to lexemes (words and phrases) of a written language, but which serve to organize or clarify written language. See orthography.

The rules of what punctuation marks should be used in what circumstances vary with language, location and time. 21st century American English is very different to 15th century Italian. The rules are constantly evolving and certain aspects of punctuation are style — the author's choice. An English language bibliography may be found at the end of this article.

See History of punctuation for details.

1 Commonly-used punctuation marks

Some common examples used by English and other languages using the Roman alphabet are listed below (with their Unicode preferred names, where appropriate).

Because of the limited number of characters available in ASCII, many of these punctuation characters have also been given specialized meanings in computer programs composed on ASCII keyboards. The dot and commercial at in e-mail addresses are examples of this kind of use. See the individual articles.

The individual articles listed below include information on use and misuse in English and provide examples:

• apostropheAn apostrophe ( ’ is a punctuation and sometimes diacritic mark in languages written in the Latin alphabet. In English, it marks omissions, forms the possessive, and, in special cases, forms plurals. English language usage An apostrophe is commonly used t ( ' ), ( ’ )
• bracket - i.e., parentheses (aka round brackets) ((, )), square brackets ([, ]), curly brackets (aka braces) ({, }), and angle brackets (⟨, ⟩)
• colonA colon is a punctuation mark, with one dot above another, like this: . Colons are commonly used to introduce lists, or to connect a broad idea with a specific example: two related sentences can be separated by colons instead of periods. A colon can only (:)
• commaA comma is a punctuation mark. It has the same shape as an apostrophe or single quotation mark in many typefaces, but it differs from them in being placed on the baseline of the text. Some typefaces render it as a small line, slightly curved or straight, (,)
• dashA dash is a punctuation mark, and is not to be confused with the hyphen, which has quite different uses. Common dashes Several forms of dashes exist, of which the most common are: Figure dash The figure dash is so named because it is the same width as a d – i.e., figure dash(‒), en dash (–), em dash (—), and quotation dash (―)
• ellipsisThis article is not about ellipses, the flattened circle shape''. In printing and writing, an ellipsis (plural: ellipses is a row of three dots or asterisks ( ) indicating an intentional omission. This punctuation mark is also called a suspension point . or suspension points (...)
• exclamation markAn exclamation mark (also exclamation point and (rarely) mark of admiration is a punctuation mark or, more pedantically, a tone mark. Like the full stop (or period), it marks the end of a sentence. A sentence ending in an exclamation mark is either an act (!)
• full stopA full stop or period also called a full point is the punctuation mark commonly placed at the end of several different types of sentences in English and several other languages. A period consists of a small dot placed at the end of a line of text, thus: " or period (.)
• hyphen (-), (‐)
• interrobang (‽) (symbol resembles a question mark laid over an exclamation mark)
• question mark (?)
• quotation marks ( British English: inverted commas) and guillemets ('; ‘, ’; "; “,”; ‹, ›)
• semicolon (;)
• slash or solidus (/)
• space between words to provide interword separation. Because the interword space has no mark, it is arguably not a "written symbol", but it clearly serves to organize and clarify Latin script writings.

The following typographical symbols or glyphs are not true punctuation marks:

• ampersand (&)
• asterisk (*)
• asterism (⁂)
• bullet (•; more)
• commercial at (@)
• dagger or obelisk (†) and double dagger (‡)
• number sign (#) – aka pound sign, hash, crosshatch, octothorpe, etc.
• prime ( ′, Unicode 0x2032, ′)
• tilde or swung dash (~)
• underscore ( _ )
• vertical bar (|) Also known as a Verticon

Also related are diacritical marks (or diacritics), which serve to distinguish among similar sounds using the same primary letter symbol, or to clarify emphasis or tone.

Each script, and each language within a script, can have its own set of punctuation marks and usage conventions.