Punctuation: The Signposts of Reading

Punctuation marks are signposts that tell readers how to travel through a sentence. A period says stop - the thought is complete. A comma says slow down and pause for a breath. A question mark says this sentence is asking something, and an exclamation point says something exciting or important just happened.

Without signposts, sentences crash into each other. Compare let us eat grandma with let us eat, grandma - one tiny comma is the difference between dinner and disaster. Punctuation is not decoration; it is meaning.

Quotation marks have a special job: they show the exact words someone said. My mom said, Wash your hands puts the spoken words inside the marks so readers can hear the voice in the sentence. The more you notice punctuation as you read, the more your own writing starts to speak clearly.