Word.ws English Dictionary

overpunctuate

overpunctuate verb: to punctuate excessively.

Verb

overpunctuate (third-person singular simple present overpunctuates, present participle overpunctuating, simple past and past participle overpunctuated)

  1. To punctuate excessively.
    • Do not overpunctuate; it is much easier than to underpunctuate. The general tendency nowadays is to make punctuation less copious than formerly.1893, John F[ranklin] Genung, “The Sentence”, in Outlines of Rhetoric Embodied in Rules, Illustrative Examples, and a Progressive Course of Prose Composition, Boston, Mass.; New York, N.Y.; Chicago...
    • In such works it is of the utmost importance to leave no room for doubt as to the meaning of the text, and the policy, in consequence, is to overpunctuate rather than not to punctuate enough.1924, Arnold Levitas, Editorial English, New York, N.Y.: Roy Press, page 16

Examples of overpunctuate in a sentence

  • If there is any tendency in punctuation, it is to overpunctuate rather than underpunctuate in order to keep fairly involved sentences moving smoothly.1979, William F. Irmscher, Teaching Expository Writing, Holt, Rinehart and Winston, →ISBN, page 164:
  • It helped, and I tend to overpunctuate to this day.1984, Stephen White, The Written Word, and Associated Digressions Concerned with the Writer as Craftsman, Harper & Row, →ISBN, pages 73 and...
  • Students may overpunctuate rather than underpunctuate sentences.1985, Mamie Atkins, Instructor's Manual, Prentice Hall Handbook for Writers, Prentice Hall, →ISBN, page 68:
  • Overpunctuate international proposals, even though the trend is to under punctuate in domestic correspondence.2003, Larry Newman, “International Proposals”, in Shipley Associates Proposal Guide for Business Development Professionals, 2nd edition...

Antonyms of overpunctuate

Forms of overpunctuate

third-person singular presentoverpunctuates
present participleoverpunctuating
past participleoverpunctuated
pastoverpunctuated

Origin of overpunctuate

From over- + punctuate.

Questions about overpunctuate

What does overpunctuate mean?
Overpunctuate means to punctuate excessively.
How do you use overpunctuate in a sentence?
If there is any tendency in punctuation, it is to overpunctuate rather than underpunctuate in order to keep fairly involved sentences moving smoothly.
What part of speech is overpunctuate?
Overpunctuate is a verb.
What is the past tense of overpunctuate?
The past tense of overpunctuate is overpunctuated.

Words near overpunctuate in the dictionary

  1. overpunch
  2. overpunched
  3. overpunches
  4. overpunching
  5. overpunctilious
  6. overpunctuate
  7. overpunctuated
  8. overpunctuates
  9. overpunctuating
  10. overpunctuation
  11. overpungent

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: overpunctuate (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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