Fran Berman
Have you ever had to re-read something because the punctuation muddied the meaning? Has anyone ever read your email differently than how you meant it? Does a period, comma, semi-colon, or quotation mark really make a difference?
According to Wikipedia, “Punctuation marks are marks indicating how a piece of written text should be read (silently or aloud) and, consequently, understood.”
As a member of the SaddleBrooke Writers’ Guild, I read poetry, prose, fiction, and non-fiction written by other members. Some write to be professionally published and will rely on a book editor to review and proofread their material. Others write for less formal reasons: a memoir, a newspaper article, or an op-ed. They must edit and proofread their own work or rely on someone else, and AI isn’t always correct. In my business career and MBA classes, I wrote proposals, brochures, marketing materials, training manuals, research papers, technical instructions, memos, countless emails, case studies, and more. For ten years before retiring, I taught business writing and grammar skills, including punctuation. My favorite reference books are The Gregg Reference Manual, the Franklin Covey Style Guide, and the APA Style Guide (Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association).
To answer the opening questions, let’s look at some writing samples.
This simple sentence (title of Lynne Truss’s book published in 2003) has multiple meanings, depending on the punctuation: “Eats shoots and leaves.” With only one period ending the sentence, it means the animal, perhaps a panda, eats sprouts and foliage. Adding one or more commas will change the meaning completely:
“Eats shoots, and leaves.” It’s a golden bamboo lemur that eats only shoots, then leaves the area.
“Eats, shoots, and leaves.” A panda walks into a diner, eats, fires a gun, and exits.
Here’s another example: “Woman without her man is nothing.” Does the writer mean “Woman, without her man, is nothing” or “Woman—without her, man is nothing”?
What about double quotation marks? They show that the writer is quoting someone else. If the quotation is only one sentence or paragraph, double quotation marks appear at the beginning and the end. If the quotation is more than one paragraph, double quotation marks start each paragraph and are used only after the last paragraph, not after each one.
When quoting someone else, put the ending punctuation inside the closing quotation marks: She really meant, “Eats shoots and leaves.” If the writer is asking a question but quoting a statement, the question mark goes after the closing quotation marks and is the only ending punctuation: Did she really mean, “Eats, shoots, and leaves”?
Finally, single quotation marks are used only, (yes, only) for a quote within a quote: His dissertation on the French Revolution said, “Marie Antoinette said the French people should ‘eat cake’ and lost her head for it.”
If it’s worth writing, write it right. And remember to use your spellchecker!