Punctuation Marks for Achieving Emphasis
Welcome to the Purdue OWL
This page is brought to you by the OWL at Purdue University. When printing this page, you must include the entire legal notice.
Copyright ©1995-2018 by The Writing Lab & The OWL at Purdue and Purdue University. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, reproduced, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed without permission. Use of this site constitutes acceptance of our terms and conditions of fair use.
Some punctuation marks prompt the reader to give a word or sentence more than usual emphasis. For example, a command with a period does not evoke the same emphatic response as the same command with an exclamation mark.
A dash or colon has more emphatic force than a comma.
The employees were surprised by the decision, which was not to change company policy.
The employees were surprised by the decision—no change in company policy.
The employees were surprised by the decision: no change in company policy.