Lately I've been discussing with some of my 9th and 11th grade students the role of punctuation in written communication.
It's interesting to see the wheels turning in their brains when they realize the significance of the fact that punctuation is ONLY a feature of writing. You'd think they'd know that, but it's generally not explicitly taught, and -- if it ever was -- it was so long ago for them that they've forgotten.
For most people, punctuation is just one of those things that is "there." In my experience, most high school students are proficient with only the most basic aspects of punctuation: how to begin and end a sentence. That's it. Beyond that, it's all guess work for them.
En dash, em dash, semicolon ... forget it!
Furthermore, since a lot of "the rules" of punctuation are little more than conventions (which often vary from place to place and over time), most people just wing it -- if they even give it much thought at all.
I'm pretty good at these kinds of things and I still have to look a lot of it up. And I kind of hate that because -- even though I recognize the importance in clear, understandable writing -- it breaks the flow.
Knowing that CoCo (who is an acknowledged Jedi/Zen master in these areas) will probably be reading this post, I find myself very self-conscious of every aspect of my punctuation, grammar and syntax! LOL
BTW: Yes, I'm aware I did not use an Oxford comma in the previous sentence. I've never been a fan. I'm not a pedantic prig about it, I just don't like it much. As long as people are consistent with their usage (or lack thereof), I don't really care.
It all comes down to two things:
- Does it make sense?
- Does it have style?
Everything else is just filler.
YMMV
PS: I kind of hate that I can't do a proper em dash on this forum when I use my laptop to post. Oddly enough, it works fine when I post on my phone but not when I use my laptop. The idiosyncrasies of software and technology only further complicate punctuation matters.
Go figure!