Thursday, January 29, 2009

Punctuation is shorthand for ideas.

What little grammar we learn in the classroom approaches punctuation as a mere compass through which our gliding eyes can sail the winds of language, a means only of disembarkation upon the sturdy ground of our writer’s point. Rather than a dimension of rhetoric, punctles are (to the common reader) little more than synchronized pause. It’s no wonder that the average student cannot differentiate between the functionality of a comma and that of a semi-colon; only in poetry and elevated prose do we encounter the ever elusive, heart-tittering dash in all its glory—and last I heard, Emily Dickinson didn’t make the final cut of the SAT’s Verbal portion.

So, what can be said of punctuation?

Very little (though I may prove otherwise) because English education today fails to address the variations of pause—it doesn’t address the momentum of a dash, the ambiguity of ellipses, the exclusivity of parentheses, or the boldness of a colon. Professors and teachers alike complain that their students can’t write; they stress vocabulary, organization, and the necessity of a thesis statement, but fail to explain the nature of a comma.