Punctu-what?

A lecture voice speaks into your earphones as you tour the museum:

“Language developed because we have a need for information to be passed from one group or person to another. As the years passed, some mother said, ‘Leave me a note if you’re going rabbit hunting while I’m at the stream, bathing your sister.’ She handed young Spikker a rock shaped like a rabbit and showed him where to leave it.”

A light comes on over a rabbit-shaped rock. In the background a primitive family is painted living in the ancient wilderness by a streambed.

Suddenly you wonder what it would be like never to receive any communication from another person in your life. Not written, not spoken, not texted, not phoned, not even from a television set or movie. It is uniquely human, the ability to pass information on from a person who is absent to a person who is present.

This communication can be almost instant, as in texting, or can span thousands of years, as in hieroglyphics.

Over the sands of time, distant communicators have had to attempt to make their communication more clear to their readers. The rabbit rock only worked for the one pair of communicators and did not work so well for leaving a note telling mom, he was going swimming. Punctuation was developed. In hieroglyphics, it is the border drawn around groups of symbols. In our modern written language, it is periods, commas, and all the other symbols that we use to express our intentions. The exact placement of these symbols is important for their exact positioning may change the meaning dramatically.

Here are two examples each using the same words, two commas, and one period:

1. Woman, without her man, is lost.

2. Woman, without her, man is lost.

Another example became the title to a book on punctuation. This is how I remember it:

The wild panda eats shoots and leaves. We learn that commas set apart items in sentences. Many of us would punctuate the sentence to read; The wild panda eats, shoots, and leaves. This sentence would make the meaning change vividly. No one wants shot at by a panda.

Television and actors, news reporting, and even the teleprompter used by speakers to deliver speeches, use the language of writing. Our current president is adept with teleprompter use, which makes the speech he delivers an act of communication between other times, yet delivered in person. This is a unique type of written communication where the recipient of the message does not see the ‘paper’. Punctuation is very important there too, for a missing punctuation symbol or one mis-used can have global consequences as message is read aloud.

Luckily, for we writers of fiction, punctuation is important but no one is likely to lose their life over it. However, the feeling the author is trying to convey can be missed, sludged, and cause enough confusion that even a good reader gives up. Punctuation conveys mood and emotions and is an essential building block of the writing craft—like wall studs in a house. You have nothing without them and you don’t have much if they don’t do their job.

Here are a couple of books that are useful references. They are small and easily read:

Strunk and White The Elements of Style

Essentials of English