punctuation

Borrowed from Medieval Latin punctuātiō (“a marking with points, a writing, agreement”), from punctuō (“to mark with points, settle”). Morphologically, punctuate +‎ -ion.

• IPA^(key): /ˌpʌŋk.t͡ʃuˈeɪ.ʃən/

• Audio (Southern England):

  (file)

• Rhymes: -eɪʃən

punctuation (countable and uncountable, plural punctuations)

1. A set of symbols and marks which are used to clarify meaning in text by separating strings of words into clauses, phrases and sentences; examples include commas, hyphens, and stops (periods).

   Different languages have different rules for punctuation.

2. Nikud
   • 1918, James George Frazer, Folk-Lore In The Old Testament, volume 3, page 53:

     Jeremiah ii. 34, where the meaningless אֵלֶּה ("these") of the Massoretic text should be corrected into אַלָּה or לַה‎אֱ ("oak" or "terebinth") […] The change is merely one of punctuation; the original Hebrew text remains unaffected.

3. An act of punctuating.

• see an extensive list of such marks at Thesaurus:punctuation mark

• point
• punctilious
• punctuate
• punctual
• punctuality

Punctuation

• “punctuation”, in Webster’s Revised Unabridged Dictionary, Springfield, Mass.: G. & C. Merriam, 1913, →OCLC.
• William Dwight Whitney, Benjamin E[li] Smith, editors (1911), “punctuation”, in The Century Dictionary […], New York, N.Y.: The Century Co., →OCLC.