Punctuation Symbols
Common punctuation symbols and marks explained, including periods, commas, quotation marks, apostrophes, dashes, brackets, slashes, and other marks used to structure written language.
33 symbol guides available
What Are Punctuation Symbols?
Punctuation symbols are marks used to organize written language, separate ideas, indicate pauses, show quotation or possession, clarify sentence structure, and communicate tone or emphasis.
Some punctuation marks are familiar from everyday writing, such as the period, comma, question mark, and apostrophe. Others are more specialized and may appear mainly in publishing, academic writing, typography, programming, dictionaries, or historical texts.
Punctuation can also be visually confusing. A hyphen, non-breaking hyphen, figure dash, en dash, em dash, and mathematical minus sign may look similar but are different characters. Straight quotation marks and curly quotation marks are also distinct, even when they appear almost identical in some fonts.
Common Sentence Punctuation
| Symbol | Name | Common use |
|---|---|---|
| . | Period / Full stop | Ends a declarative sentence; also used in abbreviations and decimal notation |
| , | Comma | Separates words, phrases, clauses, or items in a list |
| ? | Question mark | Marks a direct question |
| ! | Exclamation mark | Indicates emphasis, surprise, urgency, or strong emotion |
| : | Colon | Introduces an explanation, list, quotation, example, or related information |
| ; | Semicolon | Connects closely related clauses or separates complex list items |
Quotation Marks and Apostrophes
Quotation marks and apostrophes are especially easy to confuse because many keyboards provide straight characters while publishing software may automatically convert them into typographic curly forms.
| Symbol | Name | Typical use |
|---|---|---|
| ' | Apostrophe / Straight single quote | Plain-text apostrophe or quotation mark |
| ’ | Right single quotation mark | Typographic apostrophe and closing single quotation mark |
| ‘ | Left single quotation mark | Opening single quotation mark |
| " | Straight double quote | Plain-text quotation mark |
| “ | Left double quotation mark | Opening double quotation mark |
| ” | Right double quotation mark | Closing double quotation mark |
| « | Left-pointing double angle quotation mark | Opening quotation mark in several languages |
| » | Right-pointing double angle quotation mark | Closing quotation mark in several languages |
| ‹ | Left-pointing single angle quotation mark | Single quotation mark in some typographic systems |
| › | Right-pointing single angle quotation mark | Single quotation mark in some typographic systems |
Hyphens and Dashes
| Symbol | Name | Common use |
|---|---|---|
| - | Hyphen-minus | Keyboard character used as a hyphen or plain-text minus sign |
| ‐ | Hyphen | Joins compound words or parts of words |
| - | Non-breaking hyphen | A hyphen that prevents a line break at its position |
| ‒ | Figure dash | A digit-width dash used mainly in numerical or tabular contexts |
| – | En dash | Ranges, spans, relationships, and some parenthetical uses |
| — | Em dash | Breaks in thought, parenthetical statements, or emphasis |
| ― | Horizontal bar | Specialized typographic or quotation use |
| − | Minus sign | Mathematical subtraction or negative values |
The ordinary keyboard hyphen-minus - is frequently substituted for several of these characters in plain text. In typography and Unicode text, however, they are separate characters.
Brackets and Parentheses
| Symbols | Name | Common use |
|---|---|---|
| ( ) | Parentheses / Round brackets | Parenthetical information, grouping, mathematical expressions |
| [ ] | Square brackets | Inserted text, citations, mathematical notation, programming |
| { } | Braces / Curly brackets | Sets, grouped expressions, programming blocks |
| < > | Less-than and greater-than signs | Comparison symbols; also informally called angle brackets in some computing contexts |
| ⟨ ⟩ | Mathematical angle brackets | Mathematical, scientific, and specialized notation |
Slashes and Vertical Marks
| Symbol | Name | Common use |
|---|---|---|
| / | Slash / Forward slash | Alternatives, fractions, dates, URLs, paths, and technical notation |
| Backslash | Computer paths, escape sequences, and technical notation | |
| | | Vertical bar | Mathematics, programming, separators, and technical notation |
| ‖ | Double vertical line | Used in pairs for norms and other specialized notation |
| ∥ | Parallel to | Mathematical relation indicating parallelism |
Dots and Ellipsis Marks
| Symbol | Name | Typical use |
|---|---|---|
| . | Period | Sentence ending, abbreviations, decimal point in some locales |
| … | Ellipsis | Omitted material, trailing thought, hesitation, or continuation |
| ... | Three periods | Plain-text sequence often used as a substitute for an ellipsis character |
| · | Middle dot | Separators, multiplication in some notation, linguistic use, and specialized typography |
| • | Bullet | List marker or visual separator |
Other Common Punctuation Marks
| Symbol | Name | Common use |
|---|---|---|
| _ | Underscore | Blank spaces, filenames, usernames, programming identifiers |
| ~ | Tilde | Approximation, technical notation, programming, or diacritic-related use |
| ^ | Caret | Insertion mark, plain-text notation, and programming |
| * | Asterisk | Footnotes, emphasis, omission, multiplication, wildcard notation |
| † | Dagger | Footnotes, references, or specialized scholarly notation |
| ‡ | Double dagger | Secondary footnote or reference marker |
| ¶ | Pilcrow | Paragraph marker |
| § | Section sign | References to sections of documents, especially legal texts |
| ‽ | Interrobang | Combined question and exclamation |
Punctuation Symbols That Look Similar
Apostrophe ' vs Right Single Quote ’
The straight apostrophe ' is an ASCII keyboard character. The typographic apostrophe ’ is the same character normally used as a closing single quotation mark. They can look similar but have different Unicode values.
Hyphen - vs En Dash – vs Em Dash —
The hyphen-minus -, en dash –, and em dash — differ in length, Unicode identity, and intended use. They should not be treated as interchangeable simply because they are horizontal marks.
Three Periods ... vs Ellipsis …
An ellipsis character … is a single Unicode character. Typing three separate periods ... produces three characters. Both can communicate omission or continuation, but they are not technically identical.
Slash / vs Backslash
The slash / leans forward, while the backslash leans in the opposite direction. Their uses differ substantially in writing, URLs, file paths, mathematics, and programming.
Vertical Bar | vs Letter I vs Lowercase l
In some fonts, the vertical bar |, uppercase I, lowercase l, and digit 1 may appear similar. They are different characters and can behave very differently in search, code, passwords, and copied text.
Double Vertical Line ‖ vs Parallel Symbol ∥
The double vertical line ‖ and mathematical parallel relation ∥ may look almost identical in some fonts, but they are different Unicode characters and should not automatically be treated as interchangeable.
Punctuation and Unicode
Unicode includes many punctuation characters beyond those visible on a standard keyboard. It distinguishes typographic quotation marks, multiple dash characters, special spaces, mathematical punctuation, language-specific quotation marks, and historical symbols.
Two characters that look nearly identical may have different Unicode code points. This is especially important when editing documents, copying text between applications, processing text with software, or troubleshooting unexpected search and formatting behavior.
How to Identify an Unknown Punctuation Symbol
Look first at the shape of the mark and then at its position in the surrounding text. A mark between words may function differently from the same-looking mark between numbers, around a quotation, inside a formula, or within source code.
Context can help determine whether a character is punctuation, a mathematical operator, a typographic mark, a programming symbol, or a visually similar Unicode character.