Sunday Times bestselling author Caroline Taggart brings her usual gently humorous approach to punctuation pointing out what really matters & what doesn't In Roman times blocks of text were commonly written just as blocks without even wordspacingnevermindpunctuation to help the reader to interpret them Orators using such texts as notes for a speech would prepare carefully so that they were familiar with the content & didn't come a cropper over a confusion between say therapists & the rapists As we entered the Christian era & sacred texts were widely read (by priests if not by the rest of us) it became ever more important to remove any likelihood of misinterpretation To a potential murderer or adulterer for example there is a world of difference between ' If you are tempted yield not resisting the urge to commit a sin' & ' If you are tempted yield not resisting the urge to commit a sin' & the only surface difference is the positioning of a comma So yes you SMS-addicts & 'let it all hang out' Sixties children punctuation does matter & contrary to what people who tear their hair out over apostrophes believe it is there to help
- to clarify meaning to convey emphasis to indicate that you are asking a question or"ing someone else's words It also comes in handy for telling your reader when to pause for breath Caroline Taggart who has made a name for herself expounding on the subjects of grammar usage & words generally (and who for decades made her living putting in the commas in other people's work) takes her usual gently humorous approach to punctuation She points out what matters & what doesn't; why using six exclamation marks where one will do is perfectly OK in a text but will lose you marks at school; why hang glider pilots in training really need a hyphen; & how throwing in the odd semicolon will impress your friends Sometimes opinionated but never dogmatic she is an ideal guide to the (perceived) minefield that is punctuation