Introduction

Once we have made the elementary observation that a full stop must be used at the end of a sentence, it is difficult to know how much detail needs to be mastered before you can be considered competent at punctuation.

One frequently quoted example of the extent to which punctuation can create different meanings from the same words is:

Woman without her man is nothing.

Punctuation can make this mean two quite distinct things:

Woman: without her, man is nothing.

Woman, without her man, is nothing.

For further classic illustrations of punctuation as the linguistic equivalent of the philosopher’s stone, consider the following two sentences.

The condemned man walked round the yard three minutes after he was hanged.

What this means is, of course:

The condemned man walked round the yard: three minutes after, he was hanged.

Yet another example of punctuation giving meaning to a statement which is apparently absurd, may be found in an old piece of doggerel, which is often quoted (in slightly varying forms) by writers on punctuation, and which was cited by Sir Robert Megarry V-C in Marshall v Cottingham [1982] Ch 82. With no more than a final full stop by way of punctuation, the piece reads:

Every lady in this land

Hath twenty nails upon each hand

Five and twenty on hands and feet

And this is true without deceit.

When punctuated – and minor differences are possible but the following suggestion is perhaps the clearest – it reads:

Every lady in this land

Hath twenty nails: upon each hand

Five, and twenty on hands and feet;

And this is true without deceit.

Punctuation may even bring meaning to a text which not only appears to be plainly wrong (as in the previous example), but also to one which is apparently meaningless. The classic example here is the truly mind boggling:

Janet where John had had had had had had had had had had had the examiners approval.

Once this is understood to be a comment on how an exercise in written English had been marked, it becomes relatively easy to punctuate the comment itself as follows:

Janet, where John had had ‘had had’, had had ‘had’: ‘had had’ had had the examiner’s approval.

Three variations are possible. Taking them in the order in which they appear in the sentence, there is, first, the point that double quotation marks could have been used instead of single ones. Secondly, either a semi-colon or a full stop could have been used instead of a colon, although if a full stop had been used, a capital letter would be needed immediately after it, to start a new sentence. Thirdly, examiners‘ would be correct if there were two or more examiners. We will come to each of these points, albeit in a different order, shortly.