In the process of teaching my 7th graders how to read poetry out loud, I noticed that, for many of them, they paused at the end of each line, regardless of its punctuation, and lowered the tone of the last word as though it were followed by a period. I found this problem diminished when I worked with my students to distinguish the sound of a word followed by a period from that word followed by a comma, semicolon, or colon. For instance, "The boy went to the store. He bought a loaf of bread. Then he went home." is pronounced differently from "The boy went to the store; he bought a loaf of bread; then he went home." Or in "Buy several items at the store." store is pronounced differently from store in "Buy several items at the store: bread, soap, and milk."