Tell me more ×  When I'm editing people's writing, I recently
started writing the comment "put an article here" rather than
"put a 'the' or 'a' here".  Similarly, right now I have to put,
"you need a comma or period here" ... is there one word that can
encompass both 'comma' and 'period'? I don't want to put
something so general like "you need a punctuation mark here"
share|improve this question I'm afraid such a term does not
exist. You can just say "article" because the choice is limited
to the or a/an, but for punctuation marks you are either
specific or you refer to a wide variety of them. –  Paola Jun 30
'12 at 22:54 Too Localised. There no sense in trying to
distinguish 'comma' and 'period' from all other punctuation
marks in the first place, let alone find a unique identifier for
just those two (though we could just call them the two smallest
punctuation marks, being the primary distinguishing feature! :)
–  FumbleFingers Jun 30 '12 at 23:20 It's a reasonable question.
Punctuation marks do group; semi