punctuation

System of conventional signs (punctuation marks) and spaces employed to organize written and printed language in order to make it as readable, clear, and logical as possible.

Standard punctuation marks and conventions include the full stop (also known as period or point), commas, colon, semicolon, exclamation mark (or exclamation point), question mark, apostrophe, hyphen, and parenthesis (which includes dashes, brackets, and the use of parenthetical commas).

Punctuation contributes to the effective layout of visual language; if a work is not adequately punctuated, there may be problems of ambiguity and unclear association among words. Conventions of punctuation differ from language to language. In addition, certain conventions vary over time, often as a result of circumstances. Recently, the impact of word processing has removed the punctuation from the address headings in a letter, termed open punctuation. Otherwise, the use of punctuation will vary according to the kind of passage being produced: a personal letter, a newspaper article, and a technical report are all laid out and punctuated in distinctive ways.