The 69 Rules of Punctuation

The title is a bit a misleading. Sadly, there are more than sixty-nine “rules” of punctuation. When it comes to punctuation rules, there are probably countless guidelines about how NOT to use them. But the reality is, if you can just learn what each of the punctuation marks do, you won’t have to worry so much about all the ways NOT to use them.

This chart separates each of the 14 major punctuation marks (asterisks are excluded from this list) and identifies most all of the ways you could possibly use each punctuation mark. Note that some punctuation marks, like the en dash, have very few rules (only one this case), whereas others, like the comma, have over a dozen.

Take the time to learn these sixty-nine rules and you’ll be on your way to being punctuation error free!