Overpunctuation

noun

noun ·Rare ·Advanced level

Definitions

Noun
  1. 1
    Excessive punctuation. uncountable

    "There is no need of the commas after vindictive and the four words subsequent; and so many needless points serve rather to confuse. Overpunctuation is a very common fault in our American books; the rules of Mandeville, Goold Brown, and Mulligan, as well as of Wilson’s Punctuation, do not tend to cure the evil, but rather to perpetuate it, since they lead the writer to put in a comma wherever, by rule, there may be a place for one, without inquiring into the necessity for it."

Example

More examples

"There is no need of the commas after vindictive and the four words subsequent; and so many needless points serve rather to confuse. Overpunctuation is a very common fault in our American books; the rules of Mandeville, Goold Brown, and Mulligan, as well as of Wilson’s Punctuation, do not tend to cure the evil, but rather to perpetuate it, since they lead the writer to put in a comma wherever, by rule, there may be a place for one, without inquiring into the necessity for it."

Etymology

From over- + punctuation.

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Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.