Do you ever think about what punctuation is or its purpose? Sure, we all use it, or we should, but it generally gets left to its own self; meaning we blindly put little marks in our writing that we think are correct. The comma, for one, is way over used. I’m guilty of this myself. In fact, if I don’t pull out The Elements of Style, on a regular basis, I stick commas everywhere.
According to the dictionary, punctuation is a system of inserting marks in writing to organize the written language and clarify relations between words.
we dont seem to give punctuation as much thought as earlier writers did in fact punctuation wasnt even used much until about the 18th century although the earliest written material weve discoverd with punctuation is dated back to 9th century bc
And there you have a paragraph with no punctuation or capitalization. Was it difficult to read? It was difficult to write because some uses of punctuation have become habit.
Punctuation we don’t use on a daily basis can be very tricky. For this reason we need to stay on top of our writing skills, keep those rules fresh in our minds and actually practice writing with correct punctuation.
I listed Strunk and White’s, The Elements of Style, earlier. It’s one of the best books ever written for a writing aid. Another great little book is, Eats, Shoots & Leaves: The Zero Tolerance Approach to Punctuation
If these books aren’t in your writers toolbox–Get them! I find that I need to pull them out daily. In The Elements of Style, Roger Angell says, “Writing is hard, even for authors who do it all the time.”
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