A tour of non-alphabetic characters and their usage.
Curly quotes
Use curly quotes instead of straight quotes.
In webpages you can use the <q> tag, for example:
<q>Like this</q>
Like this
Question Mark
You can use the question mark to make sentences shorter.
We now turn our attention to the issue of whether Munchausen syndrome was diagnosed before the 1960s.
into
Was Munchausen syndrome diagnosed before the 1960s?
Semicolon (;)
- Used instead of a conjunction to combine two sentences (He did the crime; he must do the time).
- Separates list elements with internal commas: (We visited Tulsa, Oklahoma; Flint, Michigan; Paducah, Kentucky).
Colon (:)
Connects the introduction of an idea and its completion (*I own three cars: a convertible, a sedan, and a minivan).
Marks
Paragraph Mark (¶)
When citing documents with sequentially numbered paragraphs.
Section Mark (§)
When citing documents with numbered or lettered sections.
Parenthesis, brackets, and braces
Parenthesis are for separating citations or other asides from the body text. Brackets show changes within quoted material. Braces are not typically used except in technical and mathematical writing.
Hyphens and Dashes
A hyphen appears at the end of a line when a word breaks onto the next line. Dashes come in two sizes, the em dash (—) and the en dash (–).
The em dash is used to make a break between parts of a sentence.
Spacing
The non-breaking space allows you to keep words on the same line. In html you can use .