Most Afrikaans punctuation looks reassuringly like English — full stops end sentences, question marks end questions — so it's easy to assume the two systems are identical. They are not. The differences are concentrated in a few high-frequency places: how numbers are written, how quotations are marked, and where commas fall around clauses. Get these wrong and your writing reads as a literal English transcription. This page covers the points that genuinely diverge; for which words take capital letters, see capitalisation, and for the apostrophe in 'n and plurals, see the apostrophe.
Numbers: the decimal comma and the thousands space
This is the difference that trips up English speakers daily, because it changes what a number means. Afrikaans follows the continental European convention:
- The decimal separator is a comma, not a point: 3,5 means "three and a half".
- Thousands are grouped with a space (the modern standard) or sometimes a point: 1 000 or 1.000 means "one thousand".
So an English reader who sees 1.000 and reads "one point zero" has misread it by a factor of a thousand, and 3,5 read as "three thousand five hundred" is wrong by the same kind of error. The conventions are mirror images of English.
| Afrikaans | English equivalent | Value |
|---|---|---|
| 3,5 | 3.5 | three and a half |
| 1 000 | 1,000 | one thousand |
| 1 250,75 | 1,250.75 | one thousand two hundred fifty and 75/100 |
| R19,99 | R19.99 | nineteen rand ninety-nine |
| 0,5 % | 0.5% | half a percent |
Die pakkie weeg 3,5 kilogram.
The parcel weighs 3.5 kilograms.
Die motor kos meer as R250 000.
The car costs more than R250,000.
Die rente het met 0,5 persent gestyg.
The interest rose by 0.5 percent.
Quotation marks
Standard Afrikaans typography uses low-then-high curly quotation marks: the opening mark sits at the baseline and the closing mark up top — „so". This German-style convention is what you'll see in carefully typeset books. In everyday digital writing, though, plain straight or curly double quotes ("…") are entirely normal and accepted, and you'll also encounter guillemets (»…«) in some publications.
| Style | Looks like | Where you see it |
|---|---|---|
| Low–high curly | „Goeiemôre," sê sy. | typeset books, formal print |
| Straight double | "Goeiemôre," sê sy. | everyday digital text, email |
| Single (nested) | ‚…' inside „…" | a quote within a quote |
„Ek kom nou,
"I'm coming now," says Pieter and stands up.
Sy vra: „Het jy die brood gekoop?”
She asks: "Did you buy the bread?"
Two habits to note. First, the comma or full stop after a quoted speech tag typically sits inside the closing mark when it belongs to the quoted sentence, as in „Ek kom nou,". Second, reported speech is very often introduced with a colon, Sy vra: — see the next section.
The colon and the dash
The colon ( : ) introduces a list, an explanation, or direct speech, much as in English — Sy het drie dinge gekoop: brood, melk en eiers ("She bought three things: bread, milk and eggs"). Note that the word after a colon is not capitalised unless it begins a full quoted sentence.
Ons benodig die volgende: 'n hamer, spykers en hout.
We need the following: a hammer, nails and wood.
Hy het net een vraag gehad: waarom?
He had just one question: why?
The dash ( — ) marks a break in thought or an afterthought, again like English, and is freely used in informal Afrikaans. Don't confuse it with the hyphen ( - ), which joins words and breaks them across lines (see hyphenation).
Ek wou bel — maar toe was dit te laat.
I wanted to call — but by then it was too late.
Commas and subordinate clauses
Here the systems overlap but do not match, so word-for-word transfer fails. Afrikaans is generally more willing to set off a subordinate clause with a comma than modern English is, especially when the clause comes first or is clearly a separate unit of sense.
A subordinate clause introduced by a conjunction like omdat (because), as (if/when), terwyl (while), hoewel (although), or wanneer (when) is normally preceded by a comma when it follows the main clause, and followed by a comma when it opens the sentence:
Ons bly tuis, omdat dit reën.
We're staying home, because it's raining.
Omdat dit reën, bly ons tuis.
Because it's raining, we're staying home.
Sy het gebel terwyl ek kook, en ek kon nie antwoord nie.
She called while I was cooking, and I couldn't answer.
Notice in the second sentence that when the subordinate clause comes first, the main clause that follows inverts — bly ons, verb before subject — because the whole subordinate clause fills the first slot and triggers verb-second order. The comma marks exactly where that boundary falls.
A relative clause that adds non-essential information is set off by commas (like an English "which" clause), while one that is essential to identifying the noun is not:
My broer, wat in Durban woon, kom kuier.
My brother, who lives in Durban, is coming to visit.
Die boek wat ek gister gekoop het, is uitstekend.
The book I bought yesterday is excellent.
Lists: no serial comma before "en"
In a simple list, Afrikaans does not put a comma before the final en ("and") — there is no "Oxford comma". You write brood, melk en eiers, not brood, melk, en eiers. This is one place where importing the English serial comma is a visible error.
Sy het appels, pere en druiwe gekoop.
She bought apples, pears and grapes.
Question and exclamation marks
These behave as in English: a single mark at the end, no inverted opening mark (Afrikaans is not Spanish). One small reminder — a polite request phrased as a statement still takes a full stop, and a genuine question takes a question mark even when it's softened: Sou u my kon help? keeps its question mark despite the deferential framing.
Wat 'n pragtige dag!
What a beautiful day!
Sou u my asseblief kon help?
Could you please help me?
Common mistakes
❌ Die pakkie weeg 3.5 kilogram.
Incorrect — Afrikaans uses a decimal comma: 3,5.
✅ Die pakkie weeg 3,5 kilogram.
The parcel weighs 3.5 kilograms.
❌ Die kaartjie kos R1,000.
Incorrect — a thousand is grouped with a space: R1 000, not a comma.
✅ Die kaartjie kos R1 000.
The ticket costs R1,000.
❌ Sy het brood, melk, en eiers gekoop.
Incorrect — no serial comma before en in Afrikaans.
✅ Sy het brood, melk en eiers gekoop.
She bought bread, milk and eggs.
❌ Ons bly tuis omdat dit reën.
Usually marked off — Afrikaans sets the omdat-clause off with a comma.
✅ Ons bly tuis, omdat dit reën.
We're staying home, because it's raining.
❌ Omdat dit reën, ons bly tuis.
Incorrect — the fronted clause triggers inversion: bly ons, not ons bly.
✅ Omdat dit reën, bly ons tuis.
Because it's raining, we're staying home.
Key takeaways
- The decimal separator is a comma (3,5) and thousands take a space (1 000) — the reverse of English.
- Quotation marks are typically low–high curly („…") in print, but straight double quotes are fine in everyday text.
- The colon introduces lists, explanations, and direct speech; the dash marks a break in thought.
- Subordinate clauses (omdat, terwyl, hoewel) are set off by commas more freely than in English; a fronted subordinate clause forces inversion of the main clause.
- No serial comma before en in a list.
Now practice Afrikaans
Reading grammar gets you part of the way. The exercises are where it sticks — free, no signup needed.
Start learning Afrikaans→Related Topics
- Afrikaans Spelling: OverviewA1 — A map of the Afrikaans orthographic system — its diacritics, vowel doubling, and homophone traps — and where each rule lives.
- Capitalisation RulesA2 — When Afrikaans uses capitals — sentence starts, proper nouns, the lowercase 'n that hands the capital to the next word, days and months, and language and nationality names (capitalised, unlike Dutch).
- The Apostrophe: 'n and Clipped FormsA1 — Every use of the Afrikaans apostrophe — the article 'n, sentence-initial capitalisation, clipped forms like dis, and foreign-stem diminutives.
- Syllabification and End-of-Line HyphenationB2 — How to split Afrikaans words at the end of a line — break between syllables by the maximal-onset principle, keep digraphs together, divide compounds at their seam, and use the diaeresis instead of a hyphen for vowel hiatus.
- Days, Months and Seasons as NounsA2 — Days and months are capitalised and take no article; seasons are lowercase and take die — two splits English speakers must keep separate.