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Punctuation

The period or full stop

The comma

Connecting clauses

Lists in a sentence

Separating lists of adjectives

Parenthetical phrases

Introductory phrases

Quotation marks

Using single quotation marks

The exclamation mark or exclamation point

The question mark

The colon

When to capitalise after a colon

The semicolon

The apostrophe

Making words plural using apostrophes

The hyphen

Dividing words at the end of a line

Using hyphens to create compound numbers

Using hyphens to avoid confusion

Using hyphens to join words together to form adjectival phrases

Using hyphens with prefixes

Using hyphens for position descriptions

The em and en dash

Parentheses

Brackets

The forward slash

To indicate choice between multiple options

For dates

Fractions

The ellipsis or dot dot dot

Separating lists of adjectives

When you’ve got more than one adjective describing the same noun, you sometimes need to separate them with commas. The general rule is that if you can put the word ‘and’ between the adjectives and it still sounds alright, then you need to put commas between them. Take this sentence for example:

The fat heavy package is the one that you want.

There are two adjectives here: ‘fat’ and ‘heavy’. They describe the noun ‘package’. Let’s see if the sentence still sounds alright when we put an ‘and’ in between the adjectives.

The fat and heavy package is the one that you want.

Still sounds alright! So this means we probably should put a comma between the adjectives:

The fat, heavy package is the one that you want.

This isn’t always the case. Take this sentence for example:

The small red package is the one that you want.

Trying with ‘and’ in between the adjectives:

The small and red package is the one you want.

Doesn’t really sound very natural. So this means we don’t need to put a comma between the adjectives. We can leave it the way that it was:

The small red package is the one you want.

Click here to move on to the next topic: Parenthetical phrases