A wide range of plasmids has been developed for molecular studies in the fission yeast Schizosaccharomyces pombe. This includes general purpose episomes, expression vectors, epitope tagging plasmids, and integration vectors. This review describes the typical features of S. pombe vectors, including replication origins, positive and negative selection markers, and constitutive and inducible promoter systems. We will also discuss vectors with epitope tags and how these can be used to modify episomal or endogenous gene sequences. Considerations for choosing and using a plasmid are presented and specialized methods are described.