punctuation
noun/ˌpʌŋk.t͡ʃuˈeɪ.ʃən/
Etymology Borrowed from Medieval Latin punctuātiō (“a marking with points, a writing, agreement”), from punctuō (“to mark with points, settle”). Morphologically, punctuate + -ion.
1
A set of symbols and marks which are used to clarify meaning in text by separating strings of words into clauses, phrases and sentences; examples include commas, hyphens, and stops (periods).
- Different languages have different rules for punctuation.
2
Nikud.
- Jeremiah ii. 34, where the meaningless אֵלֶּה ("these") of the Massoretic text should be corrected into אַלָּה or לַהאֱ ("oak" or "terebinth") […] The change is merely one of punctuation; the original Hebrew text remains unaffected.1918, James George Frazer, Folk-Lore In The Old Testament, volume 3, page 53:
3
An act of punctuating.
- Derived terms
- film punctuation, interpunctuation, logical punctuation, mispunctuation, nonpunctuation, overpunctuation, punctuational, punctuationism, punctuationist, punctuationless, punctuation mark, punctuation space, repunctuation, under-punctuation, underpunctuation
- Related terms
30 terms
point, punctilious, punctuate, punctual, punctuality, apostrophe, curly brackets, brace, square bracket, bracket, colon, comma, dash, ellipsis, exclamation mark, fraction slash, guillemet, hyphen, interpunct, interrobang, parentheses (US, Canada), full stop, period, question mark, quotation marks, semicolon, slash, stroke, space- Meronyms
- an extensive list of such marks at Thesaurus:punctuation mark