Word.ws English Dictionary

underpunctuation

underpunctuation noun: insufficient punctuation.

Noun

underpunctuation (uncountable)

  1. Insufficient punctuation.
    • The trend of good writing is toward underpunctuation. Or, rather, if writing needs an array of marks, like an assortment of golf clubs, it is a sign that the writer’s method is becoming too involved.1911 May 11, “The Comma”, in The Daily Missoulian, volume XXXVIII, number 6, Missoula, Mont., page 4
    • Overpunctuation is just as bad as underpunctuation. Therefore if you either omit a needed mark or insert a mark that is not needed, the sentence is wrong.1933, J[acob] C[loyd] Tressler, M[arguerite] B[lack] Shelmadine, Junior English in Action, book three, Boston, Mass.; New York, N.Y.; Chicago, Ill.: D. C. Heath and Company, page 120

Examples of underpunctuation in a sentence

  • Does the writer err on the side of underpunctuation or overpunctuation?1939, W[alter] W[ilbur] Hatfield, Senior English Activities, Boston, Mass.; Atlanta, Ga.; Dallas, Tex.; San Francisco, Calif.: American...
  • Kids are cute, but somehow five pages of underpunctuation, pseudo-naïve sentence structure, and well-calculated grammatical errors are less than cute.1953 October 29, Miriam Dressler, “Terrific, At Least! Columbia “Jester” Combines Sarcasm And Sex; Shows Humor, Not Subtlety”, in Barnard...
  • Underpunctuation is common practice in the legal genre (Duff 1995: 1109).2020, Clara Ho-yan Chan, “Challenges in legal translation: a language perspective”, in Legal Translation and Bilingual Law Drafting in Hong...

Antonyms of underpunctuation

Forms of underpunctuation

alternative formunder-punctuation

Origin of underpunctuation

From under- + punctuation.

Questions about underpunctuation

What does underpunctuation mean?
Underpunctuation means insufficient punctuation.
How do you use underpunctuation in a sentence?
Does the writer err on the side of underpunctuation or overpunctuation?
What part of speech is underpunctuation?
Underpunctuation is a noun.

Words near underpunctuation in the dictionary

  1. underpulses
  2. underpunctuate
  3. underpunctuated
  4. underpunctuates
  5. underpunctuating
  6. underpunctuation
  7. underpunished
  8. underpuppies
  9. underpuppy
  10. underpush
  11. underpushed

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: underpunctuation (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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Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: LL-Q1860 (eng)-Flame, not lame-underpunctuation.wav.

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