My Dictionary

Colon  = : meaning a symbol used at the beginning of a list or to expand a sentence without a full stop.

E.g.  Camp Gear List:

        Rain jacket …

E.g.   My favourite things to do after school are: read books, listen                         to music, hang out with friends.

It isn’t always necessary to use a colon when listing things, sometimes a comma will do the same thing.

E.g.  My favourite foods are, ice cream, nachos and grapes.

Hyphen = - a symbol used to join two words/names together.

E.g. Matter-of-factly. Father-in-law.

E.g. Millie Seirs-Low. Jake Richmond-Lawrence.

Tip: The plural of hyphen is ‘hyphenated.’ Which means that the word in use has a hyphen between another word and itself.

E.g. So if you are dictating a sentence to someone and the sentence had a hyphen in it, you wouldn’t say “hyphen there”, you would say something along the lines of “that word is hyphenated.”

Ellipsis = … a symbol which means ‘to carry on an unfinished sentence’. The ellipsis is generally used in speech more than punctuation, but when writing stories and/or any other pieces of writing, the ellipsis is written to indicate an unfinished sentence or paragraph.

Dialogue example: “Watch out or I will, will…”

Text example: Until the very end…

Tip: As a general rule, the ellipsis should be no longer than three dots, so ……… would be incorrect.

Question Mark = ? The question mark indicates that someone is asking a question. Usually used in books if a character doesn’t know something and/or wants to find out something.

E.g. “What are you doing after school today?”

E.g. “I don’t understand, can you please help me?”

Quotation Mark = “_” The quotation mark(s), aka speech marks symbolise speech; someone talking.

E.g. “Hello, my name is Laura”, the girl told him.

E.g. “What is an ellipsis?” the teacher asked Jo.

Tip: It is necessary to use a comma at the end of the speaking sentence.

E.g. “It is great to see you”,  said Leo to Jake. (Correct)

E.g. “You too” replied Jake. (Incorrect)

You do not need to use a comma if you have another punctuation mark at the end of the sentence.

E.g. “Can you come over to my house this afternoon?”

Exclamation Mark =!  a mark that indicates someone exclaiming something.

E.g. “Merry Christmas!” or, “I can’t believe it!”

Tip = You can use the exclamation mark more than once at the end of a sentence. Generally only use more than one ! if the character/narrator is really REALLY exclaiming something.

E.g. “I can’t believe it!!!”

Fullstop = . The full stop symbolises the end of a sentence or paragraph.

E.g. So I trudged home.   

E.g. We had been best friends since we were very, very young.

Parentheses (Brackets) = (_) Brackets aka parentheses are used to include back-up information about the subject in question.

E.g. The boy glared at me (it seems strange, but somehow I seemed to recognise him and his seething glare.)

E.g. I looked at the birthday cake (of which the icing was unhealthily blue.)

Slashes = / lines that combine similar meanings together without using the word and.

E.g. Please do not bring food/drink into the auditorium.

E.g. You may read and/or write.

Comma = , a mark  that symbolises a breath or short pause.

E.g. I walked to school, it was freezing.

E.g. The colours of the t-shirts were black, yellow and green.

Tip = If listing a product, you do not need to use a comma after and.

Semi-Colon = ; a longer pause than a comma but not a full stop.

E.g. “I am exhausted”, wheezed  Annie; she took a deep breath and continued to run along the cross-country track.

E.g. Come on! I told myself, I can do this; I walked into the office.

Apostrophe = ‘ a mark that is used to indicate that something belongs to someone or, if using old fashioned language which often takes out some letters in words to show pronunciation.

E.g. It was Gemma’s.

E.g The bird flew o’er the trees.