Punctuation

Ampersands (&)

Used for:
- Site navigation (e.g., menu items and page titles)
- Headings, subheadings
- When there's limited space, for example, in a tweet
- Department names and for organizations that utilize ‘&’ as part of their official name
- Clustering disciplines that are reflected in official department names (e.g. African American & African studies). When different academic fields, majors, disciplines, or department names are brought together, use the ampersand within the official department or major's name and the word 'and' as the conjunction (e.g., rhetoric and scientific & technical communication or Departments of English and French & Italian)
Never use ‘&’ instead of ‘and’ in paragraph text unless it’s part of an official or proper name, degree program, a trademark, or brand.

For plurals ending with an ‘s’
Abbreviations (MD’s and PhD’s)
Letters used as words (p’s and q’s, N’s and W’s)
Use without "s" for nouns ending in ‘s’ sound (Professor Evans’, conscious’ sake)

The clause preceding the colon must be able to stand alone, it must contain a subject and predicate (Our location offers opportunities to supplement your experiences: internships at companies, exposure to arts, and engagement with nonprofits.)
Lowercase the first word following the colon unless it is a proper noun, the start of at least two complete sentences, or a direct question.

Inside quotation marks, but outside parenthesis and brackets
Use the serial comma (also called the Oxford comma), commas separating all parts in a list of things (Miller, Edison, and Thomas)
Dates
- Set off a year that follows a specific date (December 12, 1979)
- No comma for a year that follows a month or season (spring 1979)
Use commas after e.g., etc., and i.e.

No spaces before or after
Em dashes may be used Instead of parentheses or commas to set words apart as a unique idea
To create an em dash for Mac: ⌥ Opt + ⇧ Shift + - (em dash)
To create an em dash for Windows: Alt + 0151 (em dash), using the number pad

No space before or after
Prefix before compound term/open compound (pre–health sciences advising, non–self-sustaining)
Range of numbers, words that describe range, or open-ended range (July–October, 1934– )
To create an en dash for Macs: ⌥ Opt + - (en dash)
To create an en dash for Windows: Alt+0150 (en dash), using the number pad

Consult Merriam-Webster Dictionary for hyphenations of words
Consult the Chicago Manual of Style hyphenation guide for hyphenation questions not answered in Merriam-Webster. (UMN faculty, staff, and students may use Chicago Manual for free through UMN Libraries)
No space before or after hyphens within words
Use hyphens with prefixes before numbers and proper nouns (sub-Saharan, pre-1950)
Do not add hyphens between the University of Minnesota name and a campus name (University of Minnesota Twin Cities, not University of Minnesota-Twin Cities)
Hyphens with spaces may be used to style course listings (lists of one or more courses) to create visual separation between the course designator and the course title (e.g., GLOS 1001 - World History). Hyphens are preferred to colons as some course titles contain colons)

Singles quotes/apostrophe
- Use to show omitted letter (rock'n'roll, can't, class of '77)
- For quotations within a quotation
- Use without 's' for nouns ending in 's' sounds (Professor Evans' class)

Double quotes
- For direct quotes
  - Use [sic] for a quoted work misspelled or misused by the source, or for uncommon words
- Use for a phrase used in addition to a full name (John Sargent Pillsbury, "Father of the University")
Block quotes
- Do not use quotation marks for quoted words that are formatted as a block quote

Last update: February 22, 2023