Punctuation is an artificial construct, which is why it's less intuitive than grammar and usage

When it comes to grammar and word usage, English speakers can trust their gut. For example, if you know that “fewer” is usually better than “less” for countable things, you might nonetheless hesitate to say something like “I have one fewer dollar than I did yesterday.” “Fewer” just sounds worse than “less” here. That instinct is right: “less” is more correct to describe singular things, like one dollar.

Punctuation doesn’t work the same way. When it comes to questions of when to use an apostrophe or hyphen or where to put a period or comma, your instincts can’t be trusted.

Unlike language, which developed naturally, punctuation is manufactured — a set of rules that humans created for use in print. And because punctuation didn’t arise organically, it has less to do with your instincts.

That’s why your gut might tell you to use an apostrophe to form the plural in “We ordered a round of Bellini’s,” when in fact you should write “Bellinis.” The reason: You don’t use apostrophes to make plurals, except when you do, for example when writing student grades: “Henry got all A’s and B’s.”

Your gut may tell you to put an apostrophe in a past tense verb like “I demo’d the entire product line,” when in fact it should be “demoed.” You may be naturally inclined to use an apostrophe in verb forms like “He always just Venmo’s me the money,” when in fact it should be, well, I’m not sure, since Venmo isn’t in the dictionary as a verb. But I’d bet the farm on “Venmoed.” The reason: You don’t use apostrophes to conjugate verbs, except when you do.

Take, for example, “OK.” If you want to use it as a past-tense verb and you don’t want to spell it out as “okay,” how would you do that? OKed? OKd? O.K.ed? O.K.d? If you’re following AP style or Merriam-Webster’s Dictionary, none of those. According to those sources, you use an apostrophe to make different forms of the verb: We OK’d the project. She OK’s projects like this all the time. They’ve been OK’ing these projects for years.

Why no periods in OK? Simply because that’s AP’s preference, which needn’t apply to you if you prefer O.K. Though that does make the verb forms like O.K.’d even weirder.

But if your hunch is that this means abbreviations like US and ID have no periods, your hunch is off, at least as far as AP is concerned. In that style, U.S. has periods, ID does not and, for the record, USA doesn’t either. You can defy all those rules and still be in line with professional publishers, though, since book publishing allows all those breaks from AP style.

Quotation marks are another danger zone for go-with-your-gut writers. People seem to understand that a period or comma comes before the closing quote mark when the whole quote is something someone said: “I like the beach,” Josie said. But when the quote marks are there to call out words, people assume the comma goes outside: Today there’s a “red flag warning”, according to the posted signs. That assumption makes sense both instinctively and logically, yet it’s not true. The comma or period, in American English at least, always goes inside.

Then there’s the issue of terms like “e-reader,” “email,” “e-book” and “esports,” all of which are correct in AP style, and none of which have much logic to how they’re hyphenated.

Anyone who knows, or intuitively understands, that two words describing a noun are hyphenated ends up writing some compounds correctly, “a well-appointed office,” which is right, and other compounds incorrectly, like “a beautifully-decorated office,” which is wrong because adverbs that end in “ly” are exceptions to this hyphenation rule.

If you want to get words right, don’t overthink them. If you want to get punctuation right, ignore your instincts and stick to rules: Don’t use apostrophes to make plurals unless it’s absolutely necessary. Don’t use apostrophes to conjugate verbs unless the dictionary says otherwise. Always put a period or comma before a closing quote mark. Don’t hyphenate “ly” adverbs. And check a dictionary to see if periods are preferred in abbreviations.

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This entry was posted on Monday, April 6th, 2026 at 6:35 pm and is filed under Blog. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.