I think we have to be very careful about claims like the following:


> If we accept that punctuation is a made-up thing, standardized by printers
> and varying somewhat from nation to nation, can't its conventions be both
> flexible and fallible? And, to get back to one of the original questions, is
> seventh grade really too early for writer's to understand that everything in
> writing is not always black and white, correct or incorrect?

At some level of analysis this is right.  There is an arbitrariness to using a . as
opposed to a ; or @ to indicate a "complete" sentence.  On the other hand, there
are aspects of punctuation which are nearly impossible to duplicate in the spoken
language.  Nunberg, in  The Linguistics of Punctuation , notes that the following
two sentences have different meanings because of their punctuation.

  1.  Order your furniture on Monday, take it home on Tuesday.
  2.  Order your furniture on Monday; take it home on Tuesday.

(1) suggests ordering furniture is a condition for taking it home.  (2) shows that
ordering and taking it home are two separate commands.

Bob Yates, Central Missouri  State University

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