MEPX
Chapter 7 of 10All chapters
  1. 1What punctuation is for
  2. 2Commas
  3. 3Colons and semicolons
  4. 4Apostrophes
  5. 5Dashes, hyphens and brackets
  6. 6Quotation marks
  7. 7Sentence endings
  8. 8Lists and bullets
  9. 9Numbers, dates and abbreviations
  10. 10Checking punctuation

Chapter 7 of 10

Sentence endings

Full stops, questions, exclamations.

Choosing

A full stop ends a statement, a question mark a direct question, and an exclamation mark genuine surprise or command. Indirect questions take a full stop: he asked why it failed.

  • One exclamation mark at most, and rarely in formal writing.
  • A rhetorical question still takes a question mark.

Spacing

One space after a full stop is the modern standard. Two was a typewriter convention and now looks dated in proportional type.