Punctuation marks and Signs

punctuation mark name example

full stop or I like English.

period

comma I speak English, French

and Thai.

semicolon I don't often go

swimming; I prefer to
play tennis.

colon You have two choices:

finish the work today or
lose the contract.

hyphen This is a rather out-of-

date book.

dash In each town—London,

Paris and Rome—we
stayed in youth hostels.

question Where is Shangri-La?

mark

exclamation "Help!" she cried. "I can't

mark swim!"
exclamation
point (AmE)

slash, Please press your

forward browser's Refresh/Reload
slash or button.
oblique
punctuation mark name example

backslash C:\Files\jo.doc

double "I love you," she said.

quotation
marks

single 'I love you,' she said.

quotation
marks

apostrophe This is John's car.

underline Have you read Harry

Potter?

underscore b_l@cia.gov

round I went to Bangkok (my

brackets favourite city) and
stayed there for two
weeks.

square The newspaper reported

brackets that the hostages [most
of them French] had
been released.

ellipsis mark One happy customer

wrote: "This is the best
program...that I have
ever seen."
 ampersand
&
* asterisk

@ at sign

 Bullet We use bullets to introduce items in a list.

¢ Cent sign

Dollar sign
$
- Minus

+ Plus

X multiply (multiplication) times

/ ÷ divide (division)

= equals

≠ not equal sign inequality

approximately
≈ equal
approximation

strict
> inequality
greater than

strict
< inequality
less than

≥ inequality greater than or equal to

≤ inequality less than or equal to

. period decimal point, decimal separator

ab power exponent
a^b caret exponent

√a square root √a ⋅ √a = a
3
√a cube root √a ⋅ √a ⋅ √a = a
3 3 3

4
√a fourth root 4
√a ⋅ √a ⋅ √a ⋅ √a = a
4 4 4

√a
n n-th root
(radical)

% percent 1% = 1/100

‰ per-mille 1‰ = 1/1000 = 0.1%

ppm per-million 1ppm = 1/1000000

ppb per-billion 1ppb = 1/1000000000

ppt per-trillion 1ppt = 10-12