Punctuation

How to spell punctuation

11 letters · 4 syllables

How to pronounce punctuation

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does punctuation mean?

1. nounThe marks, such as commas, full stops, and question marks, used in writing to separate sentences and clarify meaning.

Punctuation in a sentence

• The editor flagged several errors in punctuation throughout the report.

• Careful punctuation makes a long contract far easier to read.

Where does punctuation come from?

Language of origin: Latin

This word traces back to the Latin verb pungere, meaning 'to prick' or 'to pierce', whose past participle gave punctum, literally 'a point' or 'a tiny pricked mark'. Medieval Latin formed punctuare, 'to mark with points', and from it punctuationem, the act of pointing a text. The idea was practical: early scribes inserted small dots into manuscripts to show readers where to pause for breath or sense. English took the word in around the 1530s, at first describing this very practice of inserting reading points, before it settled into the modern meaning of the standardised marks themselves. The same pungere root still pricks through everyday relatives such as 'point', 'puncture', and 'punctual', and remembering that shared 'punct' core is a handy way to fix the spelling, since the tricky part is the unstressed '-uation' tail rather than the clear opening.

How the word is built

• punct- (from Latin punctum: a point or prick)
• -u-
• -ation (noun-forming suffix)