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Punctuation's Most Wanted
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Published: 2008-01-03 06:52:22 +0000 UTC; Views: 55651; Favourites: 2340; Downloads: 1554
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Description
(Bloody hell, what category does this thing belong in?)So ~BrookeTheVampire asks, "...a page dedicated to use of punctuation would help out. I still have trouble sometimes with colons and semicolons, and it's always nice for someone to be able to find that out all in one spot!"
Well, BrookeTheVampire, ask and ye shall receive! This is the Punctuation Gang's Most Wanted list, all your favorite evil punctuation on one handy reference poster!
The display version above is designed to be viewed on-screen; however, there is also a downloadable "full" version , designed to be appropriate for printing at poster-size.
If you're having trouble with punctuation, this is (hopefully) a handy answer to your questions.
Related content
Comments: 295
Yeah, I did see that. But I wanted to be absolutely sure I wasn't stepping on any toes.
I also enjoyed browsing through your gallery. Keep up the amazing work!
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It's about time somebody made a poster like this! I know a few people who would truly appreciate this~
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Great job. Congratulations on the Daily Deviation, too.
Did I do that punctuation correctly?
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Amazing work! It will help me a lot with English punctuations! (I'm not a native speaker, so this is very helpful)
Also, congratulations on the DD.
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I think this amazing
what would ~ be considered?
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Um, that would be a tilde, and it rarely serves any purpose outside of technical documents and obscure corners of bibliographies and editorial notations. It is sometimes used colloquially as a shorthand for the word "approximately," but it is generally best avoided unless you know exactly where to use it.
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Cool, Thanks for the amazing user-manuel 
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An excellent contribution to grammar-dom! Don't forget that some of these items are called by different names in different countries, and some are also used in different ways (single and double quotation marks mainly).
For instance:
Period = Full Stop;
Quotes = Quotation Marks;
Exclamation Point = Exclamation Mark or even Bang;
Parentheses = Brackets;
Brackets = Square Brackets;
Also, the "acronym" you used in the Period text, U.S.A., is actually an initialism, and in most countries is spelt USA without the periods.
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OMG, this is an English teacher/student's dream reference sheet...
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LOOL, SO FUNNY. 
no egzadiration (i cant spell im troubled) gd wrk 
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this goes on my wall, never could get some of the punctuations to work...
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I'm a tutor at my college's writing center. We need a copy of this on the wall. Great job on making punctuation fun and interesting while being quite educational.
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In the comments there is a link to a printer-friendly version; please feel free to take advantage of it!
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Ahaha, awesome! Congrats on making an entertaining -and accurate- list!
I love this alot. Thank you!
*fav'd*
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How creative! I love how'd you put them in roles of criminal and describe them XD
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we need one of these in EVERY school in America x3
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TL;DR
A wild SEMI-COLON makes an appearance!
DEVIANT uses EXCLAMATION MARK.
It's super effective!
SEMI-COLON faits.
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Ahahaha, this is awesome, and a great way to keep this gang straight. Reading this made my day, thank you very much!
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One of the best deserved DDs we've had. Good job. I mean that
Though I see one typo xD
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Very amusing, but the Virgule/Slash one takes the cake. I do wish you had included Elipses, though.
~D~
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And English teacher's dream come true...!
...Or...at least MY old English Teacher's dream come true...she would have LOVED this.
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This is hilarious! You really deserved the DD. Bravo!
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absolutely brilliant
nice humour and well written out
as a grammer nazi, i think everyone should read this
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This is awesome!! I love the way how you write it as though they are really wanted criminals and thought that it was very creative. Also, it is a great help.
Thanks for sharing~
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haha, this is amazing! It's great to see a guide to learning good grammar that doesn't end in sarcasm (or treating everyone like a bunch of idiots who know nothing) like most of "writing correctly" guides on dA
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I may just know a few people who need this.
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Wow, thanks for this piece! I'm sure I can improve my English skills with the help of it. 
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This is wonderful. I love it!
Congratulations on the DD, and thank you for making this!
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I think my brain froze for a moment.. so many words @.@
But I think this is great when it comes to improving one's use of punctuation marks (memememememe), it's both interesting and informative!
Thanks a lot
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Brilliant! I hope many less-than-literates see this!
Wait a second...
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Shall I name the ways I love you? I run an online community for writers, and as one of the few members with a strong grasp of punctuation, I've been trying for years to explain semicolons to the other writers in the group. I'm definitely going to have to direct them over here.
(On a side note, there's an alternate form of possessives most commonly seen in England (but also sometimes in the U.S.A.) in which you insert 's after words ending in s that aren't plural. For example: Chris's bike.)
(Oh, and when ending a question with a quote which isn't a question, the question marks actually go outside the quotation marks. For example: Should we really accept this as "the law of the land"? The same goes for all punctuation that isn't commas or periods. You usually only see that in academic papers, though.)
Okay, I'm going to stop punctuation nerding at you now and just express my love again. So much love. So very much.
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Indeed, feel free to direct your writers here. If this kills even one horrible run-on or sentence fragment, it was worth the effort.
That form of possessives is now considered accepted practice in the United States when applied to proper nouns; however, all other nouns still follow the rule of s' and not 's.
And you are indeed correct in your placement of certain punctuation in academic papers or essays, but I was primarily shooting for storytellers and would-be novelists with this, so I kept the rules short, simple, and direct, even if not precisely accurate for every special case.
But indeed, let us endeavor (endeavour, if you prefer) to bring others within the fold of grammar geekery, for it needs growing, and one cannot learn to bend or break or abuse the rules until one knows them well. So thanks muchly for heapin' thy lovin' upon my scribin'; much obliged, I reckon
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Amazing! I know a few English teachers that would love this!
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Oh, wonderful!
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Very entertaining I wish I had had something like that when I was learning punctuation at school. The only thing I notice is that you call () parenthesis and I have never actually heard anyone call them that before, to me they are brackets and [] are square brackets.
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That's because you're from the United Kingdom where some of the names are different. The rules generally still apply in your country, with a few rare minor variations; only the names are different.
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It was just an observation.
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Helpful and funny, the best combination ever! Really well deserved DD
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This is so brilliant! I couldn't help but giggle while reading this. Well done, this is going straight to my favorites
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Thtis is great..! XD
My english 2 teacher laughed her ass off when she read this.... 
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I need to give a link of this to some of my friends: they have a hard time with punctuation sometimes.
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