[lg policy] The Laws of English Punctuation

[Dennis Baron]

Now on the Web of Language: The Laws of English Punctuation: bit.ly/pIE7KW

Here's an SAT-type question for you.

People who ask, “Where does the comma go?” do so because they are convinced that incorrect punctuation represents which of the following linguistic problems:

a. carelessness
b. the failure of education
c. the decline of grammar
d. the end of civilization
e. all of the above
However you answer this question, you’re likely to think that punctuation errors need to be corrected, the sooner the better, and that they represent some bigger problem that surely warrants attention too, but fix the punctuation first. Punctuation is certainly useful to help readers deal with long or difficult texts and to make up for features of spoken discourse like intonation or emotion that don’t transfer well to the page. But if you spend a lot of time correcting other people’s punctuation, and you’re not a copyeditor by profession, then maybe you need to get a life.



____________________
Dennis Baron
Professor of English and Linguistics
Department of English                    
University of Illinois 
608 S. Wright St.
Urbana, IL 61801                                               

office: 217-244-0568
fax: 217-333-4321

http://www.illinois.edu/goto/debaron

read the Web of Language:
http://www.illinois.edu/goto/weboflanguage








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