As a copy editor, I’m sickeningly familiar with most types of punctuation. I can bore people with the innate details of the differences between en and em dashes or why you should never disregard the semicolon.

When it comes to fiction writing, the rules of punctuation become a little more malleable. You can intentionally write a run-on sentence to induce a sense of panic in your reader. You can decide not to use colons if you don’t like them. And choosing terminal punctuation—a period, exclamation point or question mark, for example—can completely change the tone of a sentence. So, in this reader-suggested category, I thought I’d share my thoughts about different types of punctuation.