British & American English-different words for punctuation.

Hi,
I was looking through the website & noticed the word period several times & I did not know what it was.I now know it`s the word full stop(British English). Are there other words relating to punctuation that are different between British & American English. Would it be good to list them on the site for reference.Just a thought!

Lee

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Permalink Reply by Cherry on March 1, 2009 at 10:20am: Hi Lee,
I've checked and I can't find any other ones that are different. I guess the best way to know for sure is to list the punctuation marks and what they are called. We will be able to compare them and find out.

This is what we call them in American English (or at least what I call them):
. period
, comma
: colon
; semicolon
# pound
$ dollar sign
¢ the cent sign
~ tilde
" " quotation marks
| pipe
[ ] brackets
{ } braces
( ) parentheses
' apostrophe
! exclamation mark
? question mark
- hyphen sometimes called dash, in mathematics it is the minus sign
+ plus sign
= equal sign
% per cent sign
_ underscore
/ slash
\ backslash
* asterisk
@ at sign
... ellipsis
^ caret
< less than
> greater than
<> angle brackets
ü diaeresis
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Permalink Reply by Beatrice on March 1, 2009 at 11:43am: Hyphen and dash are different from each other, aren't they? I know that hypen is shorter than dash and it's purpose is to make the word easier to read when the word has a prefix. Also it is used to create compound words. I found some examples for the usage of hyphens.

* the words which has prefixes like; re-arrange, ex-girlfriend, etc.
*compound words like; up-to-date
The up-to-date newspaper reporters were quick to jump on the latest scandal.
Also hyphen is used when writing numbers out as words.
* fifty-two (52)

The dash ( -- or — ) should be used when making a brief interruption within a statement, a sudden change of thought, an additional comment, or a dramatic qualification. It can also be used to add a parenthetical statement, such as for further clarification, but should still be relevant to the sentence. Otherwise, use parentheses. Keep in mind that the rest of the sentence should still flow naturally. Try to remove the statement within the dash from the sentence; if the sentence appears disjointed or does not make sense, then you may need to revise. There should be spaces before and after the dash in British English.

* An introductory clause is a brief phrase that comes—yes, you guessed it—at the beginning of a sentence.; ▶ Reply to This (Please don't include e-mail or Skype address)