USE OF PUNCTUATION Punctuation is a set of universally accepted, standardized marks such as periods, commas, and question marks that help clarify the meaning of a sentence or structural portions of writing. Marks Definitions . Period / Fullstop , comma ? Question mark ¿ ? Spanish question marks (open and close) ! Exclamation mark ¡ ! Spanish exclamation marks (open and close) ... Ellipsis : Colon ; Semicolon ´ Apostrophe ‘ ’ Single quotation marks (open and close) “ ” Double quotation marks (open and close) - Hyphen – En dash — Em dash / Slash \ backslash ( ) Parentheses (open and close) [ ] Brackets (open and close) { } Braces (open and close)