Punctuation marks are crafty tools used to send signals as we read.
When most people learn to read, they don’t take pauses and blast right past the punctuation marks because their focus is on the words. So, why include punctuation marks in writing?
When I was teaching punctuation, it was tricky for students to understand the role of commas and semicolons, and how to use them properly. Their writing was full of run-on sentences, which I think is a problem for a lot of folks. Sometimes we want to extend our ideas, yet we’re not sure how to do that. That’s where the power of punctuation comes in!
While teaching about punctuation and sentence structure, I would constantly come back to the power of punctuation. What power does the comma have that makes it special? What about the semicolon? The period, they got that one!
- Comma: signals to the brain that a pause is happening so that we can digest the information we were just presented with in order to continue on with the same idea.
- Semicolon: A longer pause that allows our brains to process the information and then realize that there is an additional bit of information that will connect to what we just read.
- Period: A chance to take a break and take a moment to comprehend the information presented before we move on.
These pauses and moments take less than a second, once we understand what the symbols mean. Not everyone loves punctuation, but love it or not our brains use these little symbols to help us process and understand information. So don’t skim over the punctuation: it matters!