Apostrophe (‘) (Single Quotation Mark)
— 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 to show possession (Coach Evans’ class, not Coach Evans’s class)
Colon
— The clause preceding the colon must be able to stand alone; it must contain a subject and predicate (We offer acrobatic and aerial classes for young people: Multiple Trapeze, Spanish Web, Vault Mini Trampoline.)
— 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.
Comma
— Inside quotation marks, but outside parenthesis and brackets
— Use Oxford comma, commas separating all parts (Static Trapeze, Cyr Wheel, and Acrobatics)
Hyphen (-)
— Do not hyphenate words where hyphenation is optional (nonprofit, not non-profit)
— Never hyphenate multicultural
— Always hyphenate “self-” compounds, whether they are adjectives or nouns (self-confidence)
— Use suspended hyphens to replace repeated words, prefixes, or suffixes in two or more compound modifiers (pre- and post-show meeting)