“If you don’t think punctuation matters, try forgetting the comma in, I’m sorry, I love you.”
A colleague recently bemoaned the tendency among some business writers to send emails without punctuating them. She had received an email that said, “order misdelivered sent to wrong branch but we fixed it” How hard would it have been, she mused, for the writer to pen, “The order was delivered to the wrong office. We corrected the mistake.”? A few seconds of typing yields a far more understandable message.
What’s wrong with omitting punctuation marks?
Punctuation marks tell the reader’s eye which sets of words belong together, separate grammatical components of sentences, and assist with reading silently and reading aloud. They can vastly change the meaning of a sentence, as in the classic “woman without her man is nothing.” This can mean that men are important: “Woman, without her man, is nothing,” or that women are important: “Woman: Without her, man is nothing.” Lack of punctuation muddies the reader’s ability to comprehend your words.
History of Punctuation
First, let’s look at the history of punctuation. Early languages such as Sanskrit had no spaces between words and sentences. Look at an ancient Hindu, Chinese, Greek, or Latin text, and you’ll see a steady stream of squiggles. It was so difficult to parse the language that only an elite group of scribes was literate. Because of limited literacy, political power rested with the chosen few.
Most ancient cultures transmitted their traditions orally, so early punctuation was designed to make it easier for readers to read texts aloud. The earliest paragraph markings appeared around 500 BC. Around 200 BC, the librarian of the famous library of Alexandria, Aristophanes of Byzantium, got so tired of unscrambling unbroken lines of text that he developed a simple system of punctuation marks. Punctuation developed gradually through the Greek and Roman period until Medieval times, when monastic scribes began putting separations between words and sentences.
The spread of Christianity coincided with improvements in written language, as Charlemagne strove to spread the word of God throughout his empire. Unlike ancient religions, Christianity strove to spread the word of God through the written Bible. Punctuation marks in biblical texts showed readers how to read the text aloud.
When the printing press was invented in the 15th century, punctuation marks became more standardized until they reached their current form in the 19th century. Modern punctuation is more attuned to showing grammatical information than to reading aloud. Today, emojis are the new punctuation language; people use them to convey emotional nuance.
In sum, we’ve spent 2,200 years trying to get punctuation marks into our written language — so why are people using text and email today so eager to get rid of them?
Why Do People Omit Punctuation Marks?
Do you know people who send stream-of-consciousness emails and texts without regard for punctuation? I do. And I cringe when I get their messages because reading them feels like careening down the highway at 70 miles per hour. My eyes race from word to word without pause, not knowing which words belong together until I’ve read the whole thing and go back to insert all the missing periods and commas mentally. This process is frustrating and time-consuming — and it’s only necessary because the writer couldn’t be bothered to do the work himself.
Here are the three reasons why I think modern writers eschew punctuation:
· They’re rushing.
As they race to dispatch their next email, these writers feel they don’t have time to insert dots and dashes. Just think: Nanoseconds might be wasted on the effort to put a period at the end of a sentence!
· They’re ignorant.
These people are not sure how to punctuate correctly. Rather than learn, they simply skip it. If they were absent on the day, the teacher explained about commas and colons, they figure they will never get the lesson. HINT: It’s possible to learn this information as an adult.
· They don’t care.
A manager once bemoaned the terrible writing of his staff members, many of whom were graduates of prestigious universities. When he asked them to use proper punctuation, they scoffed and said, “We’re subject matter experts — our grammar and punctuation don’t matter. People will figure out what we mean.” The disdainful attitude implied by this remark betrays a profound disrespect for their readers.
As Samuel Johnson wrote, “Easy reading is hard writing.” The writers who rush, don’t know, or don’t care about telling readers how to group their words risk ruining their chances to fulfill the fundamental purpose of writing: To convey a message into another person’s mind.
Fight the Good Fight
The next time you are racing to revise a report or email, notice the urge to forge ahead without punctuating your sentences. Then resist it. Remember that the only reason you are writing is to engage your reader’s attention and get them to understand what you want to say. By skipping punctuation marks, you sabotage your message and diminish your credibility (and promotability) in the eyes of people who care about correctness.
I leave you with an example from a grammar book published in 1885:
Charles the First walked and talked an hour after his head was cut off.
Properly punctuated, this would read:
Charles the First walked and talked. An hour after, his head was cut off.
So keep your head and don’t skip the punctuation marks!
Call Worktalk When:
- Companies lose customers due to poor messaging from sales and customer service teams;
- Clients complain about communication from professional service firms’ staff members;
- Employees need to humanize the output of AI-assisted writing programs so it doesn’t sound fake;
- Employees need help developing the right prompts for AI-assisted writing programs to generate more effective outputs;
- Employees waste time repeatedly emailing one another because their messages are unclear.
Contact me at lizd@worktalk.com or 310.396.8303.