Editing Esperanto orthography (section)

== Punctuation ==
As with most languages, punctuation is not completely standardized, but in Esperanto there is the additional complication of multiple competing national traditions.

[[Comma (punctuation)|Commas]] are frequently used to introduce subordinate clauses (that is, before ''ke'' "that" or the ''ki-'' correlatives):
:''Mi ne scias, kiel fari tion.'' (I don't know how to do that.)
The comma is also used for the [[decimal point]], while thousands are separated by non-breaking spaces: ''{{gaps|12|345|678,9}},'' or sometimes by apostrophes: ''Li enspezis $3'300'000.''

The [[question mark]] (?) and the [[exclamation mark]] (!) are used at the end of a clause and may be internal to a sentence. Question words generally come at the beginning of a question, obviating the need for [[Inverted question mark and exclamation point in Spanish|Spanish-style inverted question marks]].

[[full stop|Periods]] may be used to indicate [[initialism]]s: ''k.t.p.'' or ''ktp'' for ''kaj tiel plu'' (et cetera), but not abbreviations that retain the grammatical suffixes. Instead, a hyphen optionally replaces the missing letters: ''D-ro'' or ''Dro'' for ''Doktoro'' (Dr). With ordinal numerals, the adjectival ''a'' and accusative ''n'' may be superscripted: ''13a'' or ''13<sup>a</sup>'' (13th). The abbreviation ''k'' is used without a period for ''kaj'' (and); the [[ampersand]] (&) is not found. [[Roman numeral]]s are also avoided.

The [[hyphen]] is also occasionally used to clarify compounds, and to join grammatical suffixes to proper names that haven't been Esperantized or don't have a nominal ''-o'' suffix, such as the accusative on ''Kalocsay-n'' or ''Kálmán-on.'' The proximate particle ''ĉi'' used with correlatives, such as ''ĉi tiu'' 'this one' and ''ĉi tie'' 'here', may be poetically used with nouns and verbs as well ''(ĉi jaro'' 'this year', ''esti ĉi'' 'to be here'), but if these phrases are then changed to adjectives or adverbs, a hyphen is used: ''ĉi-jare'' 'this year', ''ĉi-landa birdo'' 'a bird of this land'.<ref>Kalocsay and Waringhien, §&nbsp;54.</ref>

[[Quotation mark]]s show the greatest variety of any punctuation. The use of Esperanto quotation marks was never stated in Zamenhof's work; it was assumed that a printer would use whatever was available, usually the national standard of the printer's country. [[Em dash]]es (—...), [[guillemets]] ({{Not a typo|«...»}} or reversed {{Not a typo|»...«}}), double quote marks ({{Not a typo|“...”}} and German-style {{Not a typo|„...“}}) and more are all found. Since the age of word-processing, however, American-style quotation marks are the most widespread. Quotations may be introduced with either a [[comma]] or a [[colon (punctuation)|colon]].

Time and date format is not standardized among Esperantists, but internationally unambiguous formats such as 1970-01-01 (ISO) or 1-jan-1970 are preferred when the date is not spelled out in full ("la 1-a de januaro 1970").

=== Capitalization ===
[[Capitalization]] is used for the first word of a sentence and for proper names when used as nouns. Names of months, days of the week, ethnicities, languages, and the adjectival forms of proper names are not typically capitalized ''(anglo'' "an Englishman", ''angla'' "English", ''usona'' "US American"), though national norms may override such generalizations. Titles are more variable: both the Romance style of capitalizing only the first word of the title and the English style of capitalizing all lexical words are found.

All capitals or small capitals are used for [[acronym]]s and [[initialism]]s of proper names, like ''[[TEJO]],'' but not common expressions like ''ktp'' (etc.). Small capitals are also a common convention for [[family name]]s, to avoid the confusion of varying national naming conventions: {{Smallcaps|Kalocsay}} Kálmán, [[Leslie Cheung|Leslie {{Smallcaps|Cheung}} Kwok-wing]].

[[Camel case]], with or without a hyphen, may occur when a prefix is added to a proper noun: ''la geZamenhofoj'' (the Zamenhofs), ''pra-Esperanto'' ([[Proto-Esperanto]]). It is also used for [[Russian orthography|Russian-style]] syllabic acronyms, such as the name ''ReVo'' for ''Reta Vortaro'' ("Internet Dictionary"), which is homonymous with ''revo'' (dream). Occasionally mixed capitalization will be used for orthographic puns, such as ''espERAnto,'' which stands for the ''esperanta radikala asocio'' (Radical Esperanto Association).

Zamenhof contrasted informal ''ci'' with formal, and capitalized, ''Vi'' as the second-person singular pronouns. However, lower-case ''vi'' is now used as the second-person pronoun regardless of number.