punctuation mark Definition

1. Any of the set of marks such as the full stop, comma, question mark, colon, etc that in written text conventionally indicate the pauses and intonations that would be used in speech, and which help to make the meaning clear to the reader.

See Usage Notes at apostrophe, brackets, colon, comma, dash, exclamation mark, full stop, hyphen, oblique, question mark, quotation marks and semicolon.