A few years ago, I bought a book from a friend who was emigrating to the UK. The title of the book is Eats, Shoots & Leaves by Lynne Truss. The picture on the cover is a panda on a ladder painting a comma. Pandas eat shoots and leaves but with some punctuation added in, it changes the whole message to something akin to a shoot-out in a restaurant.

Editors often sit with books that either have too little punctuation, too much punctuation or the wrong punctuation, and it is these seemingly insignificant changes in the conveying of a message or story that some authors tend to find trivial. Yet, they are vital to conveying the correct message or bringing across the right nuances to carry the words that authors place an emphasis on.

I do remember how we sat at school doing grammar and going through endless exercises to practise the correct use of punctuation. There were inevitably comments from the class, such as: “Who is going to use this when we are finished with school?” or “What does it matter anyway? I am going to study … and it has nothing to do with boring grammar lessons.” Oh, how short-sighted we were back then.

Punctuation marks are like road signs that tell you when to pause or stop, when there is a “curve” ahead, etc. If you ignore the road signs, you may end up in a crash. Writing without any punctuation will just be words that have no meaning to them.

It is precisely because of the punctuation errors, misspellings and erroneous word choices that I became interested in editing. I have been an avid reader since childhood, and quite honestly, when it comes to constantly finding errors, I lose my enjoyment of the content and become bothered by the mistakes. Those are books that I have never finished reading, and neither would I recommend them to others to read. You can understand now why the book Eats, Shoots & Leaves tickled my interest.

While different style guides may differ on certain things, the general rules of punctuation in English are pretty much universal. A question should always end with a question mark. Quotation marks for direct speech are important to differentiate between what is said and what is not said.

Sometimes, authors use hyphens and ellipses to replace words rather than using a conjunction or other relevant word. These are things that editors look at when editing a manuscript or document. There needs to be a focused edit of each sentence, a comprehensive look at the manuscript or document for consistency in delivery as well as an overview of the entire manuscript for tweaking to prevent over or underuse of punctuation, pet words and phrases. Overuse of things like hyphens and ellipses, while possibly part of the author’s thought process, should not be the end product of what becomes published or shared.

Authors would do well to be mindful of their punctuation, not necessarily as they write, but definitely as they read through their writing before sending it off for editing. It will make the editing process a little easier on the editor and will have fewer things for you to check when the manuscript is returned to you. Keep in mind that some editors charge per hour, some per page and some per word.

In the end, you want a book that someone you may never meet would read and enjoy and possibly purchase more copies of to share with others.

So, does punctuation matter? On all levels, yes, it does. When your editor suggests a punctuation change, consider it as a good guideline to follow.

Basic Punctuation marks in English:

.               full stop

,               comma

?              question mark

!              exclamation mark

:               colon

;               semi-colon

“ ”           double quotation marks

‘ ’            single quotation marks

’               apostrophe

–             hyphen

–             en dash

—           em dash (used in publishing for a dash with no spaces before or after it)

/              forward slash

…             ellipsis

( )            parentheses (round brackets)

[ ]            square brackets

{ }            curly brackets