The main punctuation marks
The period . ends a statement, the comma , separates parts of a sentence, the colon : introduces a list or an explanation, and the semicolon ; joins two closely related sentences. The question mark ? and exclamation mark ! end questions and exclamations, the apostrophe ’ shows possession or missing letters, and quotation marks “ ” surround speech.
Dashes come in three common lengths: hyphen -, en dash – and em dash — (see the dash symbol page). Parentheses ( ) and brackets hold extra information, and the ellipsis … marks omitted words or a trailing thought. The colon symbol and quotation mark symbols pages go deeper into those marks.
Special and rare punctuation
Beyond the keyboard, Unicode has hundreds of punctuation marks. The double exclamation mark ‼︎ and exclamation question mark ⁉︎ also exist as emoji. The interrobang ‽ merges ? and ! into one mark. The dagger † and double dagger ‡ mark footnotes, and † next to a name can mean the person has died. The reference mark ※ is a Japanese note sign, and the asterism ⁂ separates sections of a text.
The single-character ellipsis … keeps its three dots together, so they never split across two lines. Fullwidth versions such as ！ and ？ are made for Chinese and Japanese text, where every character fills a square.
How to type special punctuation
On a Mac: Option + ; for …, Option + 1 for ¡, Option + Shift + / for ¿, Option + T for † and Option + Shift + 7 for ‡.
On Windows, use Alt codes on the number pad: Alt + 0133 for …, Alt + 0161 for ¡, Alt + 0191 for ¿, Alt + 0134 for † and Alt + 0135 for ‡, while Alt + 19 types ‼︎. Phones reveal many marks when you press and hold a key: hold ? for ¿ and ! for ¡. For ©︎ ®︎ ™︎, see the trademark symbol page.