Saturday, January 17, 2009

Punctuation: The 'so what?' question

OK, I admit it. I like punctuation. But what word lover doesn't? Bad punctuation can ruin a sentence.

A lot of students, and non-students, wonder why some people are so hung up on punctuation. The reason seems clear to me: Punctuation makes written communication easier to understand. Without proper punctuation, a sentence can lose its meaning, and that's the last thing a good communicator wants. Here's an example I used during the first week of classes this week.

Read the following setence aloud, and try to figure out what it means:

A woman without her man is nothing.

Got it? Good. Now, scroll down and read the same sentence with different punctuation, and see how the meaning changes.

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A woman: Without her, man is nothing.

See the difference proper puncutation makes? Hope you enjoyed that one.

4 comments:

J. Alfred Proofreader said...

Nice example. I hope your students get the message.

Proper punctuation is of paramount importance...otherwise, there's chaos.

How'd you like that use of alliteration?

Lynn Klyde-Silverstein said...

Nicely said, J!

J. Alfred Proofreader said...

Thank you. Looking forward to your next post.

J. Alfred Proofreader said...

Thank you. Looking forward to you're next post.