Periods, commas, brackets, dashes. Semi-colons, 'inverted commas', apostrophes and "quotes." Dreadful, and dreadfully complicated, right?

Each one of these wretched things has a packet of rules to go with it. And there are more bits of punctuation besides these.

Awful. Nobody can ever get a handle on how to punctuate. True?

Actually not true.

Why? Because there's a secret about punctuation: it's there to serve us, not the other way around.

Said differently, it's nothing but a code to show our readers what we're trying to say exactly.

That means punctuation is not about bags of rules. It's really about doing on paper what we do with our voices.

Which is to say, punctuation is natural. And so there's a natural way to approach it!

It all starts with using your breath. (Yes, using your breath.)

How does it work? Well, notice that 'We like sheep' doesn't mean the same thing as 'We, like sheep, ... (have strayed)'. The commas change the meaning, obviously. But notice also that you read these two things differently, depending on whether commas are in place or not. Try it out loud, and see how your voice pauses slightly at the commas. Whenever your speaking voice pauses like that, you're probably talking a comma. When you're writing, read along as you go; keep track of your pauses, and insert commas accordingly. It really works!

Sometimes your voice comes to a complete stop. That's not a comma. It's a period, or what the British call, reasonably enough, a 'full stop'. It's the end of a thought. Put periods at the end of each of your completed sentences.

So far, so good?

Here is a refinement on pausing for commas. You know when you describe something between commas? (It's called an 'appositive'.) When you say, 'Dogs, who have special noses, can smell rabbits'? Well, when you want to describe like this, only less emphatically, use (parentheses) instead. If you want to do it more emphatically, use dashes. A dash looks like a minus sign elongated. Some word processors make dashes automatically, when you type two minus signs. Copy editors use two different kinds of dash, but never mind that. For us, a dash is a dash. How do you know you're making your appositive description less emphatic or more emphatic than plain old commas make it? You guessed it: you listen to your voice.

What about semi-colons ( ; ), and for that matter, colons ( : )? Answer: don't use either of these. The former you don't really need, and the latter is mostly for making lists. Good writers tend not to make lists.

Okay, so there it is. This much is the beating heart of all punctuation. It really is. Try the natural voice trick for a while and see if you don't relax about commas and periods.

When you're ready, check in with me for some more. I've got a lot on hyphens, for example, and brackets-oh, and how to handle quotations. I suggest that you have a special look at my paper on apostrophes, too.

Oh, heck, why don't you just come to my website and have a look at my whole manual on writing by steps.

But in the meantime, just get writing. It only gets easier when you try. Forget the rules, and GO!