Punctuation and marks

Write each mark where it would sit in a word, not in the middle of the space.

A full stop belongs on the baseline. An apostrophe belongs up at the top. A comma hangs a little below the line. For letters, position is a detail; for marks, position is the whole meaning.

Why it matters more than it looks

A letter carries its own shape — an e is recognizable wherever you put it. A mark is mostly a dot or a tick, and what makes it a full stop rather than an apostrophe is where it sits. Put a full stop halfway up and every sentence you type ends in a floating speck.

Where each one goes

• Full stop, comma — on the baseline. The comma's tail drops a little below.
• Apostrophe, quotation marks — at the top, level with the tallest letters.
• Colon, semicolon — stacked on the baseline, upper dot around body height.
• Hyphen, dash — halfway up the body height, not on the baseline.
• Question mark, exclamation — standing full height from the baseline.

They are small, so take a moment

Marks are quick to write and easy to dash off carelessly. They are also everywhere in real text — a full stop and a comma appear more often than most letters. A sloppy comma is more visible in finished writing than a sloppy z.

No confidence signal yet

When you write a letter, Inkling can often tell whether the read was clean. For marks it is far harder, so you may get less reassurance than you did on letters. If a mark looks wrong in your font, rewrite it: One letter came out wrong.

Which marks you get

The everyday ones are included at every tier. Less common marks are part of a wider set — see How much of your hand.