Punctuation

A quick guide on punctuation follows. See the Australian Government’s Style Manual for more details.

Apostrophes (’) are used in possessives (“the University of Sydney’s Faculty of Architecture”) and to denote an omission (“that’s rock ’n’ roll”).
Colons (:) are used to indicate a ‘pause’ or the start of a list.
Commas (,) are used to separate clauses in a sentence, and to break up lists of words. They should not be over-used; nor should they be omitted when doing so may change the meaning of a sentence.
Ellipses (…) denote an omission or the removal of words. They can also be used to indicate a thought has trailed off, or a list could continue. Our style is to use a space before and after the ellipse. With the exception of quotation marks, question marks and exclamation marks, no punctuation should follow an ellipsis.
Exclamation marks (!) should be used sparingly (after actual exclamations) and only ever singly.
Semicolons (;) separate two thoughts in a sentence.