Every day, grammarians, grammar nerds, grammar sticklers, and grammar nazis around the globe complain about comma splices, seethe over misused semi-colons, protest pervasive ellipses, and mourn multiple exclamation points. They lament lost apostrophes, mutter about misplaced quotation marks, and rebuke run-on sentences.
It seems that for all the ways to get punctuation right in written English, there are three times as many ways to get it wrong. Some writers want to add more punctuation — anywhere, everywhere! Some writers just write and write and write without breaking up their sentences at all. In moderation, maybe it’s simply a reflection of personal style. But when taken to either extreme, it breeds misunderstanding.
And it leads me to just one question:
Is it more effective to miscommunicate by over-punctuating or under-punctuating?
On one hand, overwrought, abused, or otherwise misused punctuation mark’s, makes for “very” jolting, disrupted reading!!!! Its uncomfortable and irksome; for those of us who know better…not to mention, that it distracts (and detracts) from one’s message, there is no doubt about it’s misunderstandability…
On the other hand there are those who come from the land of Too Busy to Punctuate although in my experience they tend to also belong to the i dont need 2 capitalize club and everything is written stream of consciousness style with the supposed implication that we just know where the commas and periods are supposed to be and what sort of inflection or voice they intend which as we all know has its own set of miscommunication issues apart from the rules of English grammar
But I can’t decide which is more misunderstandable, so I thought I’d take a poll. What do you think? (You can share your thoughts in the comments, if you like.)
Here is one good reference on proper punctuation:
- Six Common Punctuation Errors that Bedevil Bloggers(from Copyblogger)
And two that make me laugh:
- Celebrity Grammar Rehab: Punctuation-Mark Edition(MSN Encarta)
- Commas, Turning Up, Everywhere (The Onion)
April 14, 2009 at 5:47 pm
You didn’t put in a circle for “SLAP! Don’t do that!” which is definitely where I’d put my little dot. My favorite was the one that haunted thisisby.us, back when it was still functional:
i am a journalist,,,,,,so ive seen it all,,,,,i don’t much care about ‘right’ or ‘wrong’,,,,,,i just want 2 get the stories written,,,,,,,ill do it any way i want 2,,,,,,,,thank you for reading
Needless to say, I didn’t actually read any more of it.
(Yes, I know I missed a comma. I had to.)
Levi Montgomery
April 21, 2009 at 9:10 am
While I can sympathize with people being confused by punctuation rules, I find my more bizarre debates are with COLLEGE GRADUATES who can’t grasp the meaning of simple words. I’ve seen ‘piece of mind’ and ‘peace of cake’; ample confusion over compliment vs. complement (with the confused staff blogger charging that nobody cares about this nit-picky stuff except grammar nerds like me); and a manager who would send a ‘Personal Announcement’ every time he added a new staff member to his team.
April 23, 2009 at 7:28 pm
Levi – I had nearly forgotten about the ellipsi-comma until now. And the apostrophe omission and 2s are just awful. I think you managed to hit on 73% of my pet peeves. It makes my stomach knot up, yet I can’t stop looking at that example. Someone help me please. No, really.
Henry – Brilliant examples, and I’d love to post about that very thing. Homophone: it’s not a dirty word.