Use a comma before and and or in a series: "Entering students will be required to take placement tests in English, mathematics, and a foreign language."
Do not use a comma before Jr., Sr., II, III, IV, etc.: "John H. Jones III presented the guest lecture."
Dates are punctuated month, day, year: "May 12, 2009, was the date set for commencement." This differs from the Chicago Manual, which prefers day, month, year. If using only the month and year, there is no comma: "Commencement was in held in May 2009." (also "fall 2010"; "spring 2011"; etc.)
Quotation marks are placed outside commas and periods and inside semicolons and colons.
Question marks and exclamation points are placed inside quotation marks if they are part of the quote and outside if they are not.
Items placed inside quotation marks include article titles, direct quotes, parts of books, song titles, short poems, and television and radio programs.
Italics are used for book titles, periodicals, newspapers, pamphlets, proceedings, movie titles, works of art, operas, and other long musical compositions.
Acronyms should be all caps, no periods, closed up: GPA, ID cards.
en dash* (longer than hyphen, shorter than em dash) – use in ranges, such as dates & times, e.g., 3:00–5:15 p.m., June 6–10; and to connect nouns, e.g., human–computer interaction (ctrl+minus on PC numpad) (*applies primarily to print use)
em dash – use as a strong comma or parenthesis—or for extra emphasis (ctrl+alt+minus on PC numpad)
hyphen – use to create a single word, e.g., hands-on, day-to-day, water-borne
