What are The Punctuation Marks in English Grammar?

Knowing where and when you have to use the punctuation marks can really improve your writing skills.

The period: (.) is placed at the end of a sentence, statements thought to be complete and after many abbreviations.
For example:  I used to go to the market with my brother.

Question mark: is used to indicate a direct question placed at the end of a sentence.
For example: Do you know when are going to be the exams?

Exclamation mark: is used when a person want to express a sudden outcry or add emphasis.
For example: Your son broke my window!

The coma: is used to separate ideas or elements within the estructure of a sentence.
For example: I´m going to buy bananas, apples, pears and some vegetables.

The semicolon: is used to conect independent clauses. It shows a closer relationship between the clauses than a period would show.
For example: John was hurt; he knew that she said it to upset him.

The colon: has two main uses:
* After a word introducing a quotation, an explanation, an example, or a serie.
For example: ¨I´m going to explain what is a library: it´s a place when you can look for books of all kinds.
* Within time expressions. It´s used to separate out the hour and the minute.
For example: It´s 12:30 am.

The dash: there are two kind of dashes: the emdash and the endash.
* The endash is a symbol (-) that is used to connect numbers or to connect elements of a compound adjective.
For example: 1994 - 2045
* The endash is used to indicate a break in thought or sentence structure, to separate two clauses or to introduce a phrase added for emphasis, definition or explanation.
For example: We just wanted to get three birds - but the clerk talked us into four pregnats parakeets.

The hypen: is the same symbol as the dash. Is used between the parts of a compound word or name or between the syllables of a word, especially when divided at the end of a line of text.
For example: back - to - back.

The parentheses: ( () ) are used to contain further thoughts or qualifying remarks.
For example: Matt and Kim (who were actually half brother and sister) have both blue eyes.

The brackets: ( [] ) at the bottom of each definition page, brackets surround a technical description of a word´s origin.

The braces: ( {} ) are used to contain two or more lines of a text or listed items to show that they are considered as a unit. They are not commonplace in most writing.

The apostrophe: is used to indicate the omision of a letter or letters from a word, the possessive case, or the plural of lowercase letters.
For example: Riki´s cat scratches.

Quotation marks:  ( ¨¨ ) are used to mark the beginning and end of a passage attributed to another and repeated word for word.

Single quotation mark: ( ´ ) is used for quotes within quotes.

The ellipses: is generally repesented by three periods (...) although it is occasionally demonstrated with three asterisks (***). The ellipses are used to indicate an omission, especially of letters or words. Ellipses are frequently used within quotations to jump from one phrase to another.