Can you name even half?

[Jemisa]

There are 14 punctuation marks in English grammar.
Can you name at least half of them?

jem

[Calibax]

Full stop, Comma, colon, semicolon, exclamation mark, question mark, quotation marks, ellipsis, apostrophe - and no, I haven't googled!

[boxtops]

full stop
comma
colon
semi-colon
exclamation mark
question mark
apostrophe
quotation marks
hyphen
brackets (not sure if they are parentheses)
dash
forward slash

I don't know what the other two are!

[Buenchico]

OK. Jem, I admit that I attempted a list and then gave up, but that was partly because I wasn't sure whether you were counting possessive apostrophes as separate from apostrophes denoting missing letters. Similarly are 'speech marks' counted as one form of punctuation mark or (because of 'opening' and 'closing') as two.

There are also some people who would recognise the hyphen (when not used to conjoin words) as a form of punctuation, but others who would reject the notion.

I also note that I've just used an 'Oxford comma'. Do you count that as different to a 'normal' comma?

Chris

[Jemisa]

I'm going to bed - I'll sort it tomorrow some time.

nite all. - jem

[boxtops]

Chris - I differentiate between a hyphen (a sign joining words as in Cholmondley-Smythe) and a dash - so - as two separate forms of punctuation.

What happened to this one :- ? It used to start e.g. a list, nowadays a simple colon appears to suffice.

[Buenchico]

You're showing your age there, Boxtops ;-)

I certainly remember that way of starting a list. It's the way that I was taught to do it at school but I now use the shorter form. (I'm old enough to remember being taught to precede the word "bus" by an apostrophe, in order to show that it's an abbreviation for "omnibus"!)

[boxtops]

LOL Chris - and 'phone....?! and I recall much discussion in an English class as to whether it should be "A" or "AN" hotel.

[MarkRae]

>> What happened to this one :- ? It used to start e.g. a list, nowadays a simple colon
>> appears to suffice.

> You're showing your age there, Boxtops ;-)

No, Boxtops is showing her education - it's nothing to be ashamed of...

[Buenchico]

I still find myself using an apostrophe before "phone" (as a verb) even now, Boxy. Strangely, I doubt that I'd use it before the noun.

MarK:
I'd agree that Boxy was 'well educated' (and include myself within that description) if I could see that the hyphen/dash after the colon actually served any purpose. It appears to be completely superfluous!

[Buenchico]

Damn! A split infinitive!!!

Of course I know that "actually served any purpose" should have read "served any actual purpose". (I'm well-educated but lazy!)

[jno]

the interrobang?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interrobang

The sarcmark?

http://www.telegraph....-email-confusion.html

[tamborine]

There only seem to be 11 on my keyboard !

[Jemisa]

The fourteen punctuation marks in English grammar:
Full stpp, comma, colon, semicolon, dash, hyphen, apostrophe,question mark, exclamation mark, quotation mark, brackets, parenthesis, braces, and ellip ses.

jem

[kinell]

never had any use for them either within emails or on this type of forum

will use capitals and punctuation where appropriate when needed in formal letters etc

and the odd full stop.

[jno]

hard to say what the use of braces in English grammar is, though I suppose if your trousers fell down your colon might prolapse.

[McMouse]

In the US they call a full stop a period.........bloody yanks!

[mollykins]

Isn't parentheses just the american word for brackets, meaning they're the same thing?

[tearinghair]

I'll show my age too....we used to have to write sha'n't to indicate the missing ll from 'shall' and o from 'not'. Now the word seems to be more or less obsolete anyway, replaced by won't.

[jno]

Mollykins, strictly speaking, ((())) are parentheses and [[[]]] are brackets. For most purposes people use ((())) and call them brackets. [[[]]] are most commonly used (you probably know this if you write essays) when indicating that words have been left out of something you're quoting.

[boxtops]

tearinghair, I remember that too. The different between shall and will is being eroded. One of my pet hates is "I would like to invite you to..." - well, please do it, what's stopping you?