The Art of Punctuation

Each of us has his or her own history with punctuation. For the first 18 or so years of my life I attempted to get by with as little of it as possible. This meant that I availed myself of three items of punctuation, and three only: capital letters at the beginning of sentences, periods and occasionally question marks at their close. I viewed anything more exotic as a minefield of potential error, easily caught by disapproving teachers, to my embarrassment and ultimate degradation. In college, I hesitatingly began to make use of commas, chiefly after introductory clauses. I soon acquired the knowledge that the colon stood for “as follows,” and would occasionally boldly slip one into one of my student compositions. Not long after college the dash came as a pleasing surprise to me — up there with the discovery of oysters, if not giving as much pleasure as the discovery of sex.