On Punctuation (and Grammar)

Things like punctuation have been too long ignored in our education system. And the longer issues of writing incompetence continue, the farther the descent into illiteracy of our country, supposedly one of the most developed in the world. It is time to stand up and speak out against the atrocities being committed against the written word.

Writing skills are, or should be, an integral component of education. Grammar instruction should be brought back as a standard part of writing instruction. It wouldn't be that difficult. Grammar could be taught as an extended form of spelling. As children learn English phonetics, they should be introduced to the ideas of commas and capital letters. We can teach our children to read sentences the same way they read words, with the pauses and emphases in the right places. And appropriate punctuation is a major component of ensuring that sentences are read the way they were intended.

There is no point in being free to express one’s thoughts if no one else can understand them.

---

Though it can become impractical and is often misleading, for the native speaker, it never hurts to read a written sentence aloud to listen for errors.

Another strategy for improving grammar in a written work or to help proofread could be to mentally diagram a sentence: identify the subject and predicating verb to confirm subject-verb agreement. (This would also help to ensure that sentences are full sentences rather than fragments - which could work as a stylistic choice, but is awkward when done unintentionally.