Teaching Punctuation to Advanced Writers

Charles F. Meyer

Most discussions of punctuation are confined to the mechanics sections of handbooks and rhetorics and thus tend to be of value only to basic and freshman writers. Occasionally, some texts allude to uses of punctuation that would be of interest to advanced writers, such as using punctuation to create acceptable sentence fragments or comma splices, but rarely do these texts explain these usages in much detail or provide many good examples of them. I wish to focus in this paper on the uses of punctuation that advanced writers need to be taught. Specifically, I will discuss how we can teach advanced writers to use punctuation to create rhetorical effects.

Before we teach advanced writers to create these effects, how­ever, we need to explain to them that punctuation serves two purposes in written texts. On the one hand, punctuation simply acts as a signpost for readers, telling them how the written text is organized. In the example below, the comma following night tells the reader that the initial participial phrase is ending and the main clause beginning; the comma between shaggy and giant that these adjectives are in a series; and the period following fir that the sentence is concluding.1
Walking up the trail to my lookout tower last night, I saw the new moon emerge from a shoal of clouds and hang for a time beyond the black silhouette of a shaggy, giant Douglas fir. (Abbey, p. 129)
Punctuation, however, can do more than simply reveal the structure of the text. It also has a rhetorical function and can be used by writers to influence just how the reader perceives the written text. When punctuation is used rhetorically, it “foregrounds” the meaning of the text. That is to say, it “attract[s] the reader’s (listener’s) attention more closely to the subject matter.2 This effect is created by the dash in the example below, a mark that focuses the reader’s attention on the construction it sets off. In this case, the dash emphasizes the author’s displeasure at having to live in a religious society, a point further developed in the subsequent sentences of the passage.
I have, however, to live in a Age of Faith—the sort of epoch I used to hear praised when I was a boy. It is extremely unpleasant really. It is bloody in every sense of the word. And I have to keep my end up in it.
Where do I start? (Forster, p. 34)

Punctuation foregrounds the meaning of the text any time a punctuation norm is violated. Punctuation norms are simply statisti­cal norms, and they are violated whenever a construction is punctu­ated with a mark not ordinarily used to punctuate it. In the above example, a punctuation norm is violated because the appositive is punctuated with a dash rather than a comma, the mark of punctuation ordinarily used in this type of construction. Other violations of punctuation norms occur when, for instance, periods are used to create sentence fragments and commas to create comma splices.3

While we should point out to advanced writers the two general purposes of punctuation, we do not need to teach them how punctua­tion is used to simply reveal the structure of the text. Advanced writers know (at least subconsciously) the standard uses of punctua­tion, and unlike freshman and basic writers do not regularly misuse punctuation so as to impede the reader’s perception of the written text. What advanced writers need to be taught, however, is the rhetorical uses of punctuation: how punctuation can be used to foreground the meaning of the text.

There are three steps involved in teaching advanced writers this use of punctuation. The first step is to show them examples of the specific ways that punctuation norms can be violated, the second step is to present them with some general principles that will help them determine the difference between an effective and ineffective viola­tion of a punctuation norm, and the final step is to have them do exercises that will enable them to incorporate these violations in their own writing.

The Various Ways That Punctuation Norms can be Violated

Violations of punctuation norms fall into two general categories: those resulting in relatively subtle rhetorical effects and those resulting in rather pronounced rhetorical effects. Relatively subtle effects result when we punctuate a coordinated construction with a mark not ordinarily used to punctuate it and when we use punctua­tion to intentionally shape the prose rhythm of the text.4 Much more pronounced effects result when we use exclamation marks instead of periods to end sentences, commas to create comma splices, and periods to create sentence fragments.

Coordinated constructions can be punctuated with a variety of different marks: commas, semicolons, periods, and dashes. And because they can be punctuated so many different ways, we can create numerous effects when punctuating them. One effect occurs when we punctuate the main clauses of a compound sentence with a heavier than normal mark of punctuation. For instance, compound sentences are usually punctuated with periods and semicolons only if the main clauses are lengthy and conjoined by but. However, we can create rhetorical effects if we separate the main clauses of short compound sentences with periods or semicolons. In the first example below, the semicolon helps reinforce the author’s belief that rather disparate elements in our society can peacefully coexist.
In fact, there is no reason why psychedelics and occultists, for example, and the most sophisticated technetronic system cannot comfortably coexist—the former inside the latter. They do; and they will. (Abbey, p. 127)
In the next example, the period separating the main clauses empha­sizes the author’s contention that personal relationships are possible in contemporary society, even though they are difficult to rationalize.
How, then, can we put any trust in personal relationships, or cling to them in the gathering political storm? In theory we cannot. But in practice we can and do. (Forster, p. 35)
Similar effects can be created when dashes and commas separate short coordinated phrases, constructions not normally punctuated. In the example below, the dash preceding the and emphasizes the author’s point that all types of students, not simply minorities, are affected by poor high school educations.
Teaching at City I came to know the intellectual poverty and human waste of the public school system through the marks it had left on stu­dents—and not on black and Puerto Rican students only, as the advent of Open Admissions was to show. (Rich, p. 59)
In the next example, the comma following quietly serves to emphasize the author’s belief that committee members ought to do more listen­ing.
Today’s Delphi thus represents a refinement of an ancient social device, with a moral modification of committee procedure constraining groups of people to think more quietly, and to listen. (Thomas, The Medusa . . ., p. 120)

Other effects can be created when we use semicolons to juxta­pose more than one main clause. Normally, more than one semicolon will be used only in a series whose members contain internal punctua­tion:
On stage all set to fight were three debaters: Eric Dunn, a zero-popula­tion-growth advocate, Susan Milet, a theologian; and K. C. Osborn, president of the freshman class. (Hodges and Whitten, p. 155)
In the following examples, however, series lacking a conjunction and not containing members that are internally punctuated are separated by semicolons, and the effect is to stress their parallelism and make the members of the series very closely related. In the first example, the semicolons serve to emphasize the author’s rather negative assess­ment of the future of humanity.
No millennium seems likely to descend upon humanity; no better and stronger League of Nations will be instituted; no form of Christianity and no alternative to Christianity will bring peace to the world or in­tegrity to the individual; no “change of heat" will occur. (Forster, p. 39)
In the next example, the semicolons, combined with the short sen­tences, heighten the disorganized procedures the author believes we follow when we make decisions.
For in real life, this is the way we’ve always arrived at decisions, even though it has always been done in a disorganized way. We pass the word around; we ponder how the case is put by different people; we read the poetry; we meditate over the literature; we play the music; we change our minds; we reach an understanding. (Thomas, The Medusa . . ., p. 120)

While we can use a variety of marks to create rhetorical effects in coordinated constructions, we have far fewer options concerning our use of punctuation to shape the prose rhythm of the text. Only two marks can be used to impose a prose rhythm on the text: the comma and the dash.

Even though textbooks and handbooks discuss punctuation in terms of the syntactic constructions it sets off, there is a definite (though often inconsistent) relationship between prosodic features of speech (such as pauses and changes in stress and pitch) and punctua­tion in writing. This relationship works two ways. On the one hand, punctuation can be used to mark prosodic features that always accompany a particular construction in speech. In the first example below, the comma following individuals marks a position where we would always pause in speech: following a long introductory clause. In the second example, the commas enclosing for instance mark paus­ese and changes in stress and pitch that always surround this adverb when it occurs in this position.
If it were not for such compulsive behavior by the individuals, committees would be a marvelous invention for getting collective thinking done. (Lewis Thomas, Medusa . . ., p. 116)

How, for instance, should we go about organizing ourselves for social living on a planetary scale, now that we have become, as a plain fact of life, a single community? (Thomas, The Medusa . . ., p. 40)

In addition to simply marking prosodic junctures in writing, punctuation can be used to create them. And it creates these junctures most emphatically when it is used to imitate in writing what is termed “emphatic intonation” in speech.5 In writing, the equivalent of em­phatic intonation results whenever we create a conspicuous prose rhythm by punctuating a construction that is only rarely punctuated. In the first example below, the commas enclosing the for-phrase create pauses and changes in stress and pitch that emphasize the teacher’s realization that while her student writes in a non-standard dialect, he is able to express himself quite well.
As I reconstruct it now, a schoolteacher in a Welsh mining village is reading her pupils’ essays one night and comes upon a paper which, for all its misspellings and dialect constructions, seems to be the work of a nascent poet. Turning up in the midst of the undistinguished efforts of her other pupils, this essay startles the teacher. (Rich, p. 52; emphasis mine)
In the next example, the dash preceding among creates an abrupt prose rhythm emphasizing that the author did not stay on as a teacher merely to learn and teach grammar.
My choice was to enlarge my scope to include grammar and mechanics or to find a niche elsewhere and teach verse writing. I stayed on to teach, and learn, grammar—among other things. (Rich, p. 55)
In the next example, the abrupt prose rhythm, created by the comma following he, heightens the effect of the beheading.
In 1977 Princess Mishaal and her lover were executed for adultery. She was shot; he, beheaded. (Azzi, p. 332)
And in the final example, at all is set off to emphasize the finality of the statement that the earth has no ecosystems.
If you did find a single form of life on Mars, in a single place, how would you go about explaining it? The technical term for this arrangement is a “closed ecosystem,” and there is the puzzle. We do not have closed ecosystems here, at all. (Thomas, The Meduss . . ., p. 14)

Much more pronounced rhetorical effects can be created when we violate more rigidly respected rules of punctuation, for instance when we use an exclamation mark instead of a period to end a declarative sentence. The exclamation mark is the rarest mark of punctuation, a direct reflection of the stigma attached to its usage. In a corpus of edited writing I investigated, I found that only 1 percent of the sentences of the corpus were punctuated with exclamation marks. However, the exclamation mark can be effective, especially when it is used to indicate the writer’s emotional involvement in a particularly important issue. In the following example, the exclamation mark quite effectively conveys how upset the author is after discovering that such a disproportionate number of New York students of mini­mal competency are enrolled in New York City Schools.
81 elementary schools in the state (out of a total of 3,634) had more than 70 percent of their students below minimum competency, and 65 of these were New York City public schools! (Luri, p. 37; emphasis in original)
In the next example, the exclamation mark serves to emphasize that while the author dislikes asceticism, he will tolerate it provided the ascetic is also sensitive, considerate, and plucky.
I am against asceticism myself.... Still, I do not insist.... This is not a major point. It is clearly possible to be sensitive, considerate and plucky and yet be an ascetic too, if anyone possesses the first three qualities, I will let him in! (Forster, p. 41)
In the last example, the exclamation mark dramatizes the excitement the author feels one goes through when doing scientific research.
There is something like aggression in the activity [of doing research], but it differs from other forms of aggressive behavior in having no sort of destruction as the objective. While it is going on, it looks and feels like aggression: get at it, uncover it, bring it out, grab it, it’s mine! (Thomas, The Lives . . ., p. 102)

Other pronounced rhetorical effects can be created when we use commas rather than periods or semicolons to join main clauses.Theoretically, any two main clauses can be spliced with a comma. However, in the writing that I have investigated, I have found that comma splices are most effective when they occur in constructions whose clauses are short, subjects identical, and conjunctions implied:
Altruism, a jargon word for what used to be love, is worse than weak­ness, it is a sin, a violation of nature. (Thomas, The Medusa . . ., p. 10)
The effect of the comma splice is “rapidity of movement and/or emphasis.”6 Furthermore, it indicates that the clauses it splices are very closely related, a relationship that would not be as dramatically illustrated if more standard marks of punctuation—periods and semicolons—separated the main clauses instead.

In the above example, the comma splice serves to reinforce the author’s belief that altruism and sin are closely related. In the next example, the comma following aristocracy reinforces the author’s contention that any future saviors will not have any new solutions to offer.
The savior of the future—if he ever comes—will not preach a new gos­pel. He will merely utilize my aristocracy, he will make effective the good will and the good temper which are already existing. (Forster, p. 42 emphasis mine)
And in the last example, the comma occurring after past emphasizes the author’s assertion that modern nations treat each other quite badly.
The more highly public life is organized the lower does its morality sink, the nations of today behave to each other worse than they ever did in the past, they cheat, rob, bully and bluff, make war without notice, and kill as many women and children as possible.... (Forster, p. 42; emphasis mine)

Equally as emphatic as the comma splice is the sentence frag­ment, and although there are various types of sentence fragments, only one is directly created by punctuation.7 This fragment results when a period is used to set off a construction that is structurally dependent on a previous sentence. In the example below, the phrase For us is a fragment that is structurally a member of the sentence preceding it. In this example, the fragment emphasizes the author’s unease at knowing that scientists control our futures.
Of course, Wells called them [scientists] Martians; we know today they are our own, sons of our fathers, the busy men with white smocks and clipboards who are planning our future. For us. (Abbey, p. 124; emphasis in original)
In the next example, punctuating the appositive beginning with Mistaken as a complete sentence draws attention to the author’s belief that the Yogi and the physicist both err in viewing as an allusion.
At this point the Yogi and the physicist come close together, and both, I would like to suggest, are mistaken. Mistaken, that is, insofar as either insists on the fallacy that existence, nature, the world, is nothing but the flow of process, and that the beings of this life whom we know and love —a woman, a child, a place, a tree, a rock, a cloud, a bird, the great sun itself—are mere ephemera, illusory shadows, nothing. (Abbey, p. 128; emphasis in original)
In the next example, the fragment Spring water serves to emphasize the irony of the author’s belief that not just tablets and ordinary water are enough to cure us but tablets taken with spring water:
[We are advised by the media] to “seek professional help. Get a check­up. Go on a diet. Meditate. Jog. Have some surgery. Take two tablets, with water. Spring water. If pain persists, if anomie persists, if boredom persists, see your doctor. (Thomas, The Medusa . . ., p. 48; emphasis in original)
In the last example, the what-fragment highlights the author’s reasons for writing.
I write entirely to find out what I'm thinking, what I’m looking at, what I see and what it means. What I want and what I fear. (Didion, p. 335)

Principles Governing the Violation of Punctuation Norms

While it is important that we show students the various ways that punctuation norms can be violated, we should also provide them with ways to determine the difference between an effective and ineffective violation of a punctuation norm. Although the difference between the two types of violations is difficult to describe in terms of rules or principles, students should be taught to follow the following principles:
Principle 1: Do not violate a punctuation norm if by doing so you create a construction that will confuse the reader.
Principle 2: Do not violate punctuation norms if by doing so you create a construction that is stylistically awkward.
Principle 3: Do not violate punctuation norms in more formal styles of writing.

Principle (1) is the most important of the principles and applies only to violations of punctuation norms resulting in fairly pro­nounced rhetorical effects. In particular, students need to be cautioned against creating comma splices and sentence fragments that result in perceptually difficult constructions. In the first example, the comma following rules creates ambiguity, “since the conjective adverb [however] could modify either the preceding clause or the following clause when it is enclosed by two commas.”8 In the second example, the because-clause is likewise ambiguous: it could be interpreted as part of the first clause in the example or as an introductory clause attached to a subsequent main clause.
The commune had no written rules, however, the members were moral­ly obligated to share all of their earned income.
The senate adjourned early last week. Because the motion to continue the session was defeated by most senators.
Students need to learn that fragments and comma splices are effective only if there is some cue in the written text other than punctuation that reveals the structure of the text. For instance, the reason that the comma splice in the example below does not cause misperception is that the repeated subjects and short clauses help reveal the structure of the sentence.
They [the medusa and the snail] am not really selves, they are specific others. (Thomas, The Medusa. . . , p.5; emphasis in original)

Principle (2) applies to constructions which are not perceptu­ally difficult but stylistically awkward. Exclamation marks, for in­stance, will never confuse the reader about the structure of the constructions in which they occur, but they do have the tendency to make the writer “appear somewhat hysterical.”9 Similarly, punctua­tion used to imitate emphatic intonation can result in a prose rhythm that is awkward and clumsy. In the following example, commas could be placed around as a student. However, because these marks create pauses and changes in stress and pitch that are very close to the pause that would follow perform, the result is a sentence that is clumsy and choppy:
Because writing is such a difficult task for you, as a student, to perform, you should spend extra time writing on your own.

Principle (3) applies to all violations of punctuation norms, since they draw attention to themselves and frequently violate fairly rigidly respected rules of punctuation. For instance, comma splices, fragments, and even beginning a sentence with a coordinating con­junction are not tolerated in more formal styles of writing. Students should therefore be encouraged to violate punctuation norms only in what William Smart terms the “informal essay,” the type of essay in which the writer’s voice and personal interests will not distract the reader.10

Punctuation Exercises for Advanced Writers

Typically, punctuation exercises in composition texts focus on individual rules of punctuation. For instance, after discussing the punctuation of introductory clauses with commas, many texts will contain an exercise requiring students to punctuate the introductory clauses in a group of unrelated sentences. Unfortunately, exercises of this type will be of little value in helping students master the rhetorical uses of punctuation, since such exercises fail to capture the rhetorical situations which motivate the violating of punctuation norms.

To help students best recognize these situations, we should have them do imitation exercises, exercises that have a distinctly rhetorical basis.11 These exercises should be taught in two stages. During the first stage, students should be given individual sentences containing examples of the numerous ways that punctuation norms can be violated, and they should be asked to imitate both the sentence structure and punctuation of the sentences. The sentences serving as the basis of these exercises should be similar to the ones I have cited throughout this paper: actual examples taken from the writing of good writers. If instructors are using a reader in their course, they can undoubtedly find numerous good examples in it.

The main purpose of these exercises is to familiarize students with the numerous ways that punctuation norms can be violated, and instructors can use these exercises to reinforce their discussions of rhetorically motivated punctuation. Once students have become familiar with violating punctuation norms, they should be given a second type of exercise to do, one providing them with entire contexts within which punctuation norms are violated. Below is an example of what such an exercise might look like.
It is administratively fashionable in Washington to attribute the delay of applied science in medicine to a lack of systematic planning. Under a new kind of management, it is said, with more businesslike attention to the invention of practical applications, we should arrive at our targets more quickly and, it is claimed as a bonus, more economically. Target­ing is the new word. We need more targeted research, more mission-oriented science. And maybe less basic research—maybe considerably less. This is said to be the new drift. (Thomas, The Lives. . . . , pp. 115-116)
Unlike one sentence exercises, this type of exercise provides a rhetori­cal context within which punctuation norms are violated, a context that will enable students to see precisely why particular norms were violated. In this example, students can see that in the second to last sentence, the period creating the sentence fragment and the dash preceding maybe serve to emphasize the author’s displeasure that Washington bureaucrats do not think that basic research is important.

Moreover, this type of exercise illustrates that good writers frequently violate more than one punctuation norm at a time, something I noticed when looking for examples to include in this paper. And finally, such exercises will enable students not only to practice violating punctua­tion norms but to become familiar with the types of sentences good writers use. In other words, teachers can combine discussions of both punctuation and sentence style.

Conclusions

Because discussions of punctuation have been restricted pri­marily to freshman textbooks and handbooks, advanced writers have been prevented from learning the complexities and intricacies of effective punctuation. Most of the advanced writers 1 have taught have been very interested in punctuation but unfortunately view Its mastery as simply a matter of convention, of learning a finite list of prescriptive rules. Many of my students have been quite surprised to learn that punctuation involves choice and that they can, in certain situations, flout rules they had been so rigidly taught to observe in previous English classes.

Once students realize, however, that punctuation has a rhetori­cal basis, they no longer find punctuation such a laborious and uninteresting task. Indeed, some of my more productive class discus­sions have consisted of rather lively discussions among students con­cerning the best choice of punctuation in a particular sentence.

Western Kentucky University
Bowling Green, Kentucky

NOTES

1The sources from which I took example sentences in this paper are listed in the appendix. In parentheses following each example sentence, I list the author’s last name and the page number from which the example was taken.
2 Jan Mukarovsky, “Standard Language and Poetic Language,” in Linguistics and Literary Style, ed. Donald C. Freeman (New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1970), p. 43.
3 All of the punctuation norms discussed in this paper are based on fre­quency counts cited in Charles F. Meyer, “A Descriptive Study of American Punctuation,” Ph.D. dissertation, The University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, 1983.
4There are two types of coordinated constructions in English: those which contain coordinating conjunctions such as and, or and but (example 1) and those in which the coordinator is implied (example 2).

1. John and Mary like classical music.

2. Sue likes rock, blues, jazz.

5 H. H. Hartvigson, On the Intonation and Position of the So-Called Sentence Modifiers in Present-Day English (Odense: Odense University Press, 1969), p. 127.
6 Irene Teoh Brosnahan, “A few Good Words for the Comma Splice,” College English, 38 (October 1976), p. 185.
7 For a discussion of the various types of sentence fragments in English, see Charles R. Kline, Jr. and W. Dean Memering, "Formal Fragments: The English Minor Sentence,” Research in the Teaching of English, 11 (Fall 1977), 97-110.
8Brosnahan, p. 185.
9 Celia Millward, Handbook for Writers, 2nd ed. (New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1983), p. 115.
10 William Smart (ed.), Eight Modern Essayists, 3rd ed. (New York: St Martin’s Press, 1980), p. vii.
11 For a discussion of the rhetorical basis of imitation exercises, see Edward P. J. Corbett, Classical Rhetoric for the Modern Student, 2nd ed. (New York: Oxford University Press, 1971), 496-509.

Appendix

Abbey, Edward. “Science with a Human Face.” In Abbey’s Rood. New York E. P. Dutton, 1979.
Azzi, Robert. “Saudi Arabia: The Kingdom and its Power.” National Geographic, Sep­tember 1960, pp. 286-332.
Didion, Joan. "Why I Write.” In Eight Modern Essayists, 3rd ed. Ed. William Smart. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1980.
Forster, E. M. "What I Believe.” In Eight Modern Essayists, 3rd ed. Ed. William Smart. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1980.
Hodges, John C. and Mary E. Whitten. Harbrace College Handbook, 9th ed. New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1982.
Lurie, Ellen. How to Change the Schools. New York: Vintage Books, 1970.
Rich, Adrienne. "Teaching Language in Open Admissions.” In On Lies, Secrets, and Silence. New York: W. W. Norton and Company, 1979.
Thomas, Lewis. The Lives of a Cell. New York: The Viking Press, 1974.
—.The Medusa and the Snail. New York: The Viking Press, 1979.