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grammar and writing tutorial lessons

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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

The period or full stop

A period goes at the end of most sentences. A period goes straight after the last letter in the sentence. The next sentence after a period starts one space after the period. I was always told to use two spaces after a full stop when I was typing, but now it’s generally acceptable and preferable to use one space.

The second major use of the period is for abbreviations, where some people use it in between the letters:

It would have been very different living in 5000 B.C.

However, currently in Australia many style guides recommend not using periods in this situation, and just writing:

It would have been very different living in 5000 BC.

Even if you choose to use periods in your acronyms, some do not need them. Look them up in a dictionary to find out. For instance, the acronym ‘LASER’ doesn’t require periods between the letters.

Click here to move on to the next topic: The comma