Punctuation

One of the most important tools for making paper speak in your own voice is punctuation.

                                                                                                                   
                                                                                                               -Russell Baker

When speaking aloud, you punctuate constantly--with body language. Your listener hears commas, dashes, question marks, exclamation points, quotation marks as you shout, whisper, pause, wave your arms, roll your eyes, wrinkle your brow. In writing, punctuation plays the role of body language. It helps readers hear you the way you want to be heard.


Don't let the rules scare you. Think of them as guidelines. For example, comma. Commas are part of a system; knowing that system is more helpful in making decisions than memorizing a list of rules about commas.

There are two basic systems of punctuation:

1. The loose or open system, which tries to capture the way body language punctuates talk.
2. The tight, closed structural system, which hews closely to the sentences's grammatical structure

No matter which system you prefer, be warned: punctuation marks cannot save a sentence that is badly put together. If you have to struggle over commas, semicolons and dashes, you have probably built a sentence that's never going to fly, no matter how you tinker with it.Throw it away and build a new one to a simpler design. The better your sentence, the easier it is to punctuate.