High time to invoke Aristophanes

When Aristophanes, the patron saint of punctuation, was the head librarian at Alexandria's main library, writing was a mess. Those third-century Greek philosophers, speakers and politicians were poor at getting their ideas down on parchment, even if they were great at setting up civilisation. They wrote scroll after scroll of letters etched with no spaces, punctuation or help for the reader - scriptio continua.

Aristophanes wanted a way to help readers know how much of a pause to take to consummate the semantics of the written word. He came up with a canny method of dotting ink at the top, middle, or bottom of each line. He based the dots on the formal units of speech everyone understood at the time: comma, colon and periods.

YouTube, in a survey, asked two thousand people, ages 16 to 65, their views on the current state of the English language. Ninety-four per cent thought there had been a decline in the correct use of English since the turn of the millennium, with 80 per cent identifying young people as the worst culprits. The survey also found that 75 per cent of adults now use emojis to communicate with one another. If a small digital image can express how you feel, who needs words?

Punctuation is the area most neglected in teaching and learning English as a second language. The writers who eschew punctuation as the flip side of writing don't put any premium on learning the art of using punctuation. Perhaps they belong to the pre-Einstein era wherein time and space were absolutes. After Einstein, they became relative.

In legal documents, where precision is crucial, punctuation holds life-changing implications. Take the case of the Oxford comma. In a 2018 lawsuit involving dairy truck drivers in Maine, USA, the lack of an Oxford comma led to a $5 million settlement.

When we speak, we, to consummate our communication, use stress, intonation and body language, which are replaced by default with punctuation marks in the writing to achieve the same level of communication. Proper punctuation is arguably both the sign and the cause of clear thinking.

Of course, we can write using only periods and commas for punctuation. We can cook using only salt and pepper for seasoning. But why do we do it when there are so many seasonings pleasing to a mature palate?

There are three functions of punctuation marks in English.

First, phonetic function: This function is very significant as punctuation marks indicate obviously the rhythm, pauses and tone inflexions in a written document; a written document has a tone. Many a time, the tone is neglected, and readers are free to interpret the tone the way they understand, and that may lead to misunderstanding.

Second, grammatical function: Punctuation marks are utilised in direct style, like: to mark emphatic content, to form interrogations, to emphasise syntactic elements displaced from their natural positions.

Third, semantic function: Punctuation puts readers at the vantage point to comprehend exactly the transmitted meaning which was intended by the writer and to understand the significance of particular words/phrases neon-signed with punctuation marks.

Though punctuation appears in our formal education, students dabble in punctuation because of their scant exposure to it. They are asked to punctuate the given sentences to get allotted marks. They don't respect punctuation as an art, inevitable to bring rhythm into whatever they write.

Students need to learn the basics of different punctuation marks. The nuanced learning of punctuation comes with the passage of time, depending upon the quantity and quality of what they read.

Students should understand that punctuation is a mélange of absolute rules (science) - that is what is needed at the embryonic stage of writing –, general conventions and individual options (art). Young, less experienced readers, for instance, need more help from punctuation than older, sophisticated ones.

When we understand the significance of punctuation, we can appreciate the depth it adds to our words, and in doing so, we unlock the full potential of our language. Punctuation makes writing a cerebral and visceral treat both for a writer and his readers.