The pilcrow (¶) is the poster child of abandoned punctuation marks. With roots in ancient Greece, the pilcrow started life during the fourth century BC as the paragraphos, a horizontal line drawn in the margin of many a papyrus scroll to indicate that something of interest lay in the corresponding line.
The hardest punctuation mark to use correctly is the comma, an infographic from TheVisualCommunicationGuy.com claims. That's because it has more rules and applications than any other punctuation mark.
Asterism
It's also known as a triple asterisk. People have used asterisms to mark part of a text, or to indicate minor breaks (e.g. scene changes within a chapter in a novel). But this punctuation mark is rare these days, with a line of three or more asterisks more common.
1. The Full Stop [.] This is the strongest punctuation mark, making the most definite pause (in reading aloud or silently) when used at the end of a sentence.
In the oldest Greek literary texts, written on papyrus during the 4th century bc, a horizontal line called the paragraphos was placed under the beginning of a line in which a new topic was introduced. This is the only form of punctuation mentioned by Aristotle.
Colons and dashes are two of the most mysterious and misunderstood marks of punctuation. This handout is meant to demystify and clarify the function of these forms of punctuation, so that you can use them more accurately.
⸮ (irony mark), (reverse question mark, irony mark, antonym) are punctuation marks for irony (sarcasm). It takes the form of "?" (Question mark) inverted.
There are 14 punctuation marks that are used in the English language. They are: the period, question mark, exclamation point, comma, colon, semicolon, dash, hyphen, brackets, braces, parentheses, apostrophe, quotation mark, and ellipsis.
Punctuation is the system of signs or symbols given to a reader to show how a sentence is constructed and how it should be read. Sentences are the building blocks used to construct written accounts. They are complete statements. Punctuation shows how the sentence should be read and makes the meaning clear.
The semicolon is stronger than a comma, but weaker than a period (full stop). A period separates two independent clauses with complete finality; a semicolon, on the other hand, signals a less final ending and indicates that the following clause will convey an additional idea that is closely related to the current one.
The standard English punctuation is as follows: period, comma, apostrophe, quotation, question, exclamation, brackets, braces, parenthesis, dash, hyphen, ellipsis, colon, semicolon.
THE LOVE POINT: With Valentine's Day just around the corner, this is surely going to reach its peak use. Consisting of two exclamation marks, one of which is mirrored (but both sharing the same point – n'aww) it's another of Bazin's proposals intended to indicate affection.
An ellipsis ( ... ) consists of three evenly spaced periods and is used to indicate the omission of words or suggest an incomplete thought.
It's time to stop calling them 'dot dot dot' . . . You see those dots? All three together constitute an ellipsis. The plural form of the word is ellipses, as in "a writer who uses a lot of ellipses." They also go by the following names: ellipsis points, points of ellipsis, suspension points.
An em dash is a punctuation mark that can be used to replace commas, parentheses, colons, and semicolons. In general, the em dash is seen as being more interruptive or striking than other punctuation, so it is often used stylistically to draw a reader's attention to a particular bit of information.
Percontation point
) , a reversed question mark later referred to as a rhetorical question mark, was proposed by Henry Denham in the 1580s and was used at the end of a question that does not require an answer—a rhetorical question.
Verbal irony is a figure of speech that communicates the opposite of what is said, while sarcasm is a form of irony that is directed at a person, with the intent to criticise.
The inverted question mark, ¿, and inverted exclamation mark, ¡, are punctuation marks used to begin interrogative and exclamatory sentences or clauses in Spanish and some languages which have cultural ties with Spain, such as Asturian and Waray languages.
4) William Faulkner
Unlike Emily Dickinson, some writers used no punctuation at all! One of them was William Faulkner, a grand American novelist and Nobel Prize laureate, who, in the manner of stream of consciousness, loved to challenge his readers to tackle his sometimes confusing writings.
Scriptio continua (Latin for "continuous script"), also known as scriptura continua or scripta continua, is a style of writing without spaces or other marks between the words or sentences. The form also lacks punctuation, diacritics, or distinguished letter case.
A comma is not a strong enough punctuation mark to separate the two independent clauses by itself; thus, using it causes the clauses to be spliced together.