Full stop
The punctuation mark full stop (.) is used to close sentences. A new sentence that follows a full stop has a capital letter.

Honesty is the best policy.
Sweet are the uses of adversity.
A friend in need is a friend indeed.

Full stops are also used in writing abbreviations. This is becoming less common in British English.

Examples are: oz. for ounce (s), Prof. for professor, i.e. for in other words and e.g. for for example.

Question marks
Question marks (?) are used to close direct questions. A new sentence that follows a question mark has a capital letter.

What are you doing?
Did you get my letter?
Why do we try to reach the stars?
Note that we do not use question marks after indirect questions.

He asked me if I had received his letter.
I asked her what time it was.
Exclamation marks
The exclamation mark (!) is placed at the end of an utterance which is an exclamation or which merely expresses strong emotion.

What a lovely painting it is! (exclamation)
How beautifully she sings! (exclamation)
You must leave at once! (strong emotion)
I can’t believe this! (strong emotion)

Comma
Commas reflect pauses in speech.

A listing comma is used to separate items in a series or list. In British English, the last two items in a list are not usually separated by a comma unless these are long.

The Three Musketeers were Athos, Porthos and Aramis.
I went to China, Japan, Malaysia and Singapore.
A joining comma is used to join two complete sentences into a single sentence. It is usually followed by a connecting word like and, or, but, while or yet.

We can go swimming, or we could stay here.
I decided to come home earlier than I had planned, and the others spent the evening at the local disco.
A gapping comma is used to show that certain words have been omitted instead of repeated.

Jane decided to order the home-made steak pie and Alice, the duck special. (The omitted words are decided to order.)
When subordinate clauses begin sentences, they are often separated by commas.

After I left school, I went to London.
If words or expressions interrupt the normal progression of a sentence, we usually separate them off by commas.

John, however, did not turn up.
We were, believe it or not, in love with each other.
We use commas to mark off a noun or phrase in apposition.

Milton, the great English poet, was blind.
Paul, the apostle, was beheaded during the reign of Nero.
Commas are used to mark off a participial phrase from the rest of the sentence.

Driven by rain, we took shelter under a tree.
Caesar, having conquered his enemies, returned to Rome.
A non-defining relative clause is separated from the rest of the sentence by commas.

Sailors, who are generally superstitious, say it is unlucky to embark on a Friday.

Colon
The punctuation mark colon (:) is almost always used after a complete sentence. Its function is to indicate that what follows is an explanation or elaboration of what precedes.

We decided not to go on holiday: we had too little money.
Mother may have to go into hospital: she has got kidney trouble.
I decided to buy some clothes: I had nothing to wear.
She decided to stay at home: it was raining.
A colon is used when famous sayings are quoted.
In the words of Murphy's Law: 'Anything that can go wrong will go wrong.'
Solomon says: 'Of the making of books there is no end.'

A colon can introduce a list.

We need three kinds of support: economic, moral and political.
These are the things we have to take with us: a flask of tea, some biscuits, sandwiches and fruit.
The poets I like best are: Milton, Wordsworth, Shelly and Keats.
A colon is never preceded by a white space, and it is never followed by a dash or a hyphen.

In British English, it is unusual for a capital letter to follow a colon (except at the beginning of a quotation). However, this can happen if a colon is followed by several complete sentences.

In American English, colons are more often followed by capital letters.

Semicolon
Semicolons (;) are sometimes used instead of full stops, in cases where sentences are grammatically independent but the meaning is closely connected.

Some people work best in the mornings; others do better in the evenings.
Women’s conversation is cooperative; men’s is competitive.
The Hobbit was published in 1937; the first volume of The Lord of the Rings followed in 1954.
Reading maketh a full man; conference a ready man; writing an exact man.
Some are born great; some achieve greatness; some have greatness thrust upon them.
Commas are not usually possible in cases like these.

Hyphen
Hyphens (-) are the short lines that we put between words.

ex-husband
blue-green

Uses

1. Two-word compound adjectives are hyphenated when the second word ends in -ed or -ing.

green-hued
blue-eyed
broken-hearted

Other two-word adjectives which contain the sense of 'between' are also often hyphenated.

Indo-Pak relations
Anglo-French connections
blue-green (between blue and green)
The New York-Paris flight.

Longer phrases used as adjectives before nouns are also often hyphenated.

an out-of-work singer

2. Two-word compound nouns are hyphenated when the first word is stressed.

running-shoes
bus-driver
paper-shop

3. The prefixes co-, non- and ex- are sometimes separated from what follows by hyphens.

co-operation
non-alignment
ex-husband

Notes

Nowadays there is a growing tendency to avoid hyphens. Most common short compounds are now written as single words with no separation between them.

weekend
takeover

Less common or larger compounds are written as completely separate words.

living room

Dash
Dashes (–) are common in informal writing. They can be used in the same way as colons, semi-colons or brackets.

There are three things I can never remember – names, faces and I have forgotten the other. A pair of dashes is used to separate a strong interruption to the sentence.

My mother – who rarely gets angry – really lost her temper.

Apostrophes
We use apostrophes (’) for three main reasons.

Missing letters
It is used in writing a contraction to show the place of the omitted letters.

can’t (= cannot)
it’s (= it is)
I’d (= I would/had)
who’s (= who is/has)

Possessives
We use apostrophes in writing most possessives.

the girl’s father
three miles’ walk
two weeks’ work
my parents’ wedding

Possessive determiners and pronouns do not have apostrophes.

This is yours. (NOT …your’s.)
Whose is that coat? (NOT Who’s …)
Special plurals
Apostrophes are used in the plurals of letters, and often of numbers and abbreviations.

Mind your p’s and q’s.
It was in the early 1960’s.

Quotation marks
Quotation marks (‘…’ “…”) are also called inverted commas in British English.

Quotation marks are chiefly used to set off direct speech.

‘Can I help you?’ she asked.
Pope says, ‘The proper study of mankind is man.’
We often use quotation marks round words when we give them special meanings.

A textbook can be a ‘wall’ between teacher and class.
People disagree about how to use the word ‘disinterested’

The author is an English language instructor based in Mumbai. Visit her website http://www.perfectyourenglish.com for more lessons on English grammar, writing and practical English usage.