Textual and Functional Orientation of Punctuation Marks in English

Abstract

Punctuation marks serve some important grammatical purposes in English. Punctuation, according to Oxford Advanced Learner’s Dictionary “is the marks used in writing that divide sentences and phrases; the system of using these marks”. Punctuation marks in English include the full stop or period, colon, comma, hyphen, semi-colon, ellipsis, caret, quotation mark, obelisk, dashes, exclamation mark, question mark, asterisk, parenthesis and apostrophe. Punctuation skill is very important for both learners and users of English because it calls for effective understanding and interpretation of texts. That is, punctuation skill is required for the understanding and composition of written and spoken discourse. We shall be explaining the punctuation marks and their functions in the section below. The Full Stop or Period (.) It indicates the end of a complete sentence which is not a question or an exclamation. The full stop comes at the end of declarative statement, request, entreaties and some commands. It is also used after abbreviations.