Understanding Punctuation

What difference does it make anyway? Who cares if a comma is missing, or a semi-colon, or an apostrophe here and there? Words are words, and those annoying little punctuation marks can’t be that important… can they?

They can. Imagine if you could talk to others but couldn’t use hand gestures, facial expressions or even a raised eyebrow. Half your meaning would disappear. Those innocuous-looking punctuation marks can be powerful communicators, providing shades of meaning and even rhythm to your writing.

Take the comma, that famous slowdown signal. Without commas, your reader would race through your sentences, misreading their meanings and becoming very confused. Slowing down is required in several “comma zones,” one of which is when items are listed in a series:

Amy ate peanut butter and fudge ice cream, chocolate cake, vanilla pudding, butterscotch candies, and an Alka-Seltzer.

Without the comma’s slow-down signal, the reader will speed through this way:

Amy ate peanut butter and fudge ice cream chocolate cake vanilla pudding butterscotch candies and an Alka-Seltzer.

Your reader will need the Alka-Seltzer long before the end of the sentence, as the contents of Amy’s stomach will be all in a jumble! And he’ll be left to wonder: is it peanut butter plus fudge ice cream, or is it peanut-butter-and-fudge ice cream? (The difference is important, at least to Amy!)

While the simple comma is clearly an important tool, it should not to be confused with its sister-mark, the semi-colon. If the comma slows the reader down, the semi-colon applies the brakes even more. It doesn’t signal a final stop like a period does, but it tells the reader to slow down even more, sometimes to catch important messages about groupings:

Amy ate green vegetables, including spinach, broccoli, and brussels sprouts; yellow vegetables, including squash; and six varieties of lettuce.

The semi-colon functions here as a sort of super-comma. With the semi-colons, the reader is able to see that the green vegetables belong in one family, ditto for the yellow ones, and the lettuce also as a family of its own. Without the semi-colons, just using commas, the reader would miss out on the families of foods and end up with another stomach jumble.

Along with commas and semi-colons, you’ll find that apostrophes are handy indicators in your sentences. Those little single marks that look like crooking fingers are useful to tell your reader that somebody owns something. Notice above where we mentioned Amy’s stomach--that apostrophe tells you that the stomach belongs to Amy. Here’s another example:

Amy’s menu included vegetables and dessert.

If you forget the little crook that shows that Amy owns the menu, you’ll end up with a plural instead of a possessive, something like:

Amys menu included vegetables and dessert.

Remember, the apostrophe shows ownership, and without it, you’ll often get a plural. (Your reader will wonder how you ended up with so many Amys…)

And finally, holding the blah-blah with quotation marks:

Had enough to eat? Here’s a final explanation of the lowly quotation marks, from a high school student who has dubbed them “blah-blah holders:”

“See, the quotation marks are the holders, and inside is the blah-blah-blah, and the stuff like the period also goes inside the holders because it’s also part of the blah-blah-blah.” (I guess they’re good enough to hold his blah-blah, too!)

There are a million more uses of punctuation, but if you learn to use commas for slowing down, semi-colons for really slowing down, apostrophes to show ownership, and quotation marks to “hold the blah-blah,” you’ll be well on your way to more meaningful sentences.