Punctuation Bingo Card Generator

About Punctuation bingo

All 38 Punctuation bingo words

Every entry from Abbreviation period to Trailing ellipsis, grouped by first letter. Edit them in the generator above: drop Abbreviation period if it does not suit your group, or add your own.

• A: Abbreviation period, Apostrophe
• B: Brackets
• C: Capital for a name, Capital for the word I, Capital in a title, Capital letter, Colon, Colon before a list, Colon in a time, Comma, Comma after greeting, Comma before and, Comma in a date, Comma in a list, Comma in an address, Contraction apostrophe
• D: Dash, Dash for a pause
• E: Ellipsis, Exclamation point
• H: Hyphen, Hyphenated word
• P: Parentheses, Period, Period after a command, Plural possessive, Possessive apostrophe
• Q: Question mark, Question mark at end, Quotation marks, Quotes around speech
• S: Semicolon, Semicolon joins ideas, Sentence capital, Slash, Surprised exclamation
• T: Trailing ellipsis

Punctuation bingo at a glance

How long Punctuation bingo lasts

150 shuffled call orders, played on the first 60 cards of this set. With 30 players the first line comes after a median 12 calls (about 2 minutes at one call every 10 seconds); the first blackout needs 35 calls (about 6 minutes).

How to host Punctuation bingo

1. 1

   Print the Punctuation cards

   Give each player one card; a free set prints up to 30, no two alike. Card 1 above starts with Surprised exclamation, Question mark, Colon before a list, Period and Capital for the word I.

2. 2

   Print the caller sheet

   All 38 entries appear on it in shuffled order, opening with Sentence capital, Exclamation point, Apostrophe, Question mark and Brackets; tick each one as you read it out.

3. 3

   Write a short sentence on the board for each call, missing the mark in question, and let players add it before marking, for example the comma in July 4 1776 for “Comma in a date”.

4. 4

   Group the apostrophe squares, “Possessive apostrophe”, “Plural possessive” and “Contraction apostrophe”, and compare the dog's bowl, the dogs' bowls and it's.

5. 5

   Use the mark names for younger groups and keep the job squares like “Semicolon joins ideas” for older writers by pasting a trimmed list.

6. 6

   Call until someone shouts bingo

   With 30 cards, expect the first line near call 12 (Possessive apostrophe in this set's order) and a blackout near call 35; check the winner's squares against your ticked list.

Punctuation bingo variations

• Punctuation variation

  Editor's desk: instead of calling a square, the caller reads or projects an unpunctuated sentence. Players mark any square whose rule the sentence needs, then one player shows where it goes, such as the “Colon before a list”.

• Blackout round

  Card 1 needs all 24 squares, Surprised exclamation to Slash; on average one card fills after 37.4 of the 38 calls (99% of the deck).

• Quick 4x4 round

  A 4x4 card needs 16 of the 38 entries and no free space; one card is full after about 36.7 calls instead of 37.4.

First 15 calls of this Punctuation set

Seed "punctuation" gives this order, the same one the caller sheet prints. With these calls, card 26 of the first 30 completes row 4 (Trailing ellipsis, Period, Hyphenated word, Contraction apostrophe and Sentence capital) on call 13, and card 4 is the first full card on call 36.

Themes like Punctuation bingo

Ranked by category, occasion and audience; none of them repeats an entry from this list, so pasting two into the Edit words box gives a longer game.