Punctuation

Use standard U.S. English rules of punctuation. The table includes some general recommendations on the punctuation marks usage based on common mistakes made by contributors.

Punctuation mark	How to use	Example
Serial (Oxford) comma	Use comma before the and and or conjunctions that connect items in series of three or more.	You can create, update, and delete roles.
Semicolon	Avoid using semicolons in sentences. Use periods or a commas instead. Use semicolons only to separate series of words separated by commas.	Large, medium, or small; soft or hard; black, gray, or white.
Colon	Use colons to introduce lists and code examples or tables where needed. Do not use colons in headings if this is not explicitly required. Typically, use lowercase letters after colons in running text.	The configuration values are: certfile …
Quotation marks	Generally, avoid using quotation marks, use the corresponding markup instead. Though, if the quotation marks are required, place commas and periods inside closing quotation marks. This applies to both words-as-words and sentence fragments.	The screen displays, “Hello, world.”