How to Use punctuation in a Sentence

punctuation

noun
  • Dinner is sort of the punctuation to the end of the day.
    Noelle Carter, latimes.com, 20 May 2017
  • But to quibble over the punctuation is to miss the point.
    Mary Norris, The New Yorker, 22 Nov. 2019
  • And not just as the punctuation point at the end of a long sentence, but from the middle of a war.
    Lee Billings, Scientific American, 13 May 2017
  • Leffert even added cute faux-Swedish spellings and punctuation on some of the names.
    Ann Lien, House Beautiful, 5 Nov. 2019
  • Then David Ojabo got in on the action with three tackles and a sack of his own at the end of the game that put the final punctuation on the win.
    Stephen Means, cleveland, 27 Nov. 2021
  • The storm is, so far, the punctuation the point for a very wet winter following five years of drought.
    Orange County Register, 18 Feb. 2017
  • The zesty curry sauce is my punctuation of choice for the fried fare, the restaurant’s top-selling dish.
    Washington Post, 21 May 2021
  • Perhaps the irony is that the punctuation itself is too much.
    Anna Orso, Philly.com, 27 Apr. 2018
  • The semi-enclosed roof adds some punctuation to the scene.
    August Brown, Los Angeles Times, 16 Oct. 2023
  • In Week 1489 the Empress asked you to rearrange the words in a movie title to make a new one (punctuation could be changed).
    Pat Myers, Washington Post, 16 June 2022
  • Tragedy comes as strange punctuation; a life is here, then gone, a dream for a nation denied.
    Los Angeles Times, 24 July 2019
  • Scatter the berries across the board in small groups or one by one, breaking up solid blocks of nuts, meat, and cheese, like punctuation marks.
    Christine Lennon, Sunset Magazine, 14 Nov. 2022
  • Times of great change, of apparent chaos, are just punctuation—the end of one paragraph and the beginning of a new one.
    Adam Rogers, Wired, 21 Apr. 2020
  • The only punctuation marks were Tiffany, who wore a Republican red pantsuit, and Don Jr., who was in bright blue, to match the flags.
    Vanessa Friedman, New York Times, 4 Nov. 2020
  • His prose was now rich but austere, shorn of most punctuation.
    Dwight Garner, New York Times, 13 June 2023
  • The moment put a punctuation mark on a three-game sweep in Motown and a season-long winning streak.
    Rustin Dodd, kansascity, 26 July 2017
  • And an LV City Steamer bag, with chevron leather and suede panels that picked up on the dress's palette, was the perfect punctuation.
    Edward Barsamian, Vogue, 12 July 2018
  • In addition to the strange wording, there's odd punctuation and a mixture of fonts.
    Aliza Chasan, CBS News, 3 July 2023
  • Death was not a punctuation but a hyphen or em dash in the continuum of life.
    The New York Times, NOLA.com, 4 July 2017
  • Then there's the question of the album title — by this point, it's already got two halves, but the punctuation question (slash?
    Shana Naomi Krochmal, EW.com, 25 Mar. 2021
  • That includes paying attention to punctuation and varying the tone of your voice to match the emotion in a book.
    Mandy McLaren, courier-journal.com, 19 Oct. 2022
  • For me, that’s the perfect punctuation of the series, a full-circle moment in the best possible way.
    Los Angeles Times, 26 Dec. 2021
  • Paired with super opaque black tights, the slippers removed the punctuation that a shoe gives an outfit.
    Laia Garcia-Furtado, Vogue, 26 July 2022
  • At the end of his scramble, Herbert rose and signaled first down — the ball still in his right hand — in a gesture that also worked well as punctuation.
    Jeff Miller, Los Angeles Times, 12 Dec. 2022
  • Montgomery put the punctuation on his stellar night with a 62-yard rushing touchdown, which put the game out of reach for Loveland thanks to a 30-point lead.
    Evan Merrill, The Enquirer, 29 Oct. 2022
  • The final few bars put the perfect punctuation on the whole performance.
    Maggie Fremont, EW.com, 18 May 2021
  • Miles wrote a couple of pieces and then waited for the papers to come back filled with red marks pointing out the spelling and punctuation mistakes.
    San Diego Union-Tribune, 15 Sep. 2019
  • As the evening wound down, guests left with beach-friendly straw totes filled with items from Goop and Saks—the ideal punctuation to a lovely, midsummer night.
    Vogue, 18 July 2018
  • All the letter keys have a secondary function that's accessible via the 123 key: numbers for the top row, and common symbols and punctuation for the bottom two rows.
    PCMAG, 15 July 2024
  • The impulse to exaggerate — and vent his frustration in run-on sentences with odd punctuation and random capitalization — is a sure sign Trump is in a swivet.
    Mark Z. Barabak, Los Angeles Times, 14 Aug. 2024

Some of these examples are programmatically compiled from various online sources to illustrate current usage of the word 'punctuation.' Any opinions expressed in the examples do not represent those of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback about these examples.

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