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The Reasons for Punctuation.

MANUSCRIPTSWEREWRITTENSOLID.

It was found that both eye and ear demanded spaces and punctuation. The reader’s train of thought goes straight ahead from word to word until the punctuation mark warns it that there is danger of misunderstanding if it does not pause. The mark shows that the words which precede it are to be understood mentally as a group, and to be read orally as a group. If the thought is kept in mind that a punctuation mark is a sort of danger signal, many of the difficulties of the subject vanish. “Henry rose, and I with him laughed at the story we had heard.” If that comma be omitted between rose and and, what happens?

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1. The comma, even more than other points, shows what the meaning of the sentence is; it should set off the parts of the thought. Nothing is easier than to spoil a minor unit of thought by breaking it in two with a comma. So far as may be, the modified subject of a sentence should not be cut into by a comma; neither should the modified predicate; nor should a subject and its predicate be separated any oftener by commas than is necessary. The following passage, written by a lad of fifteen from dictation, shows the minor units of thought divided by too many commas:—