Two of my favorite cartoons illustrate student attitudes about punctuation rules. In the first cartoon, two graduate students stroll past a fraternity house. One students asks the other, " I've finished my master's thesis. What's the deal on punctuation?" (Parade Magazine 12 March 1989: 16). In the second comic strip, Charlie Brown is reading his sister Sally's homework. "You probably should start a new paragraph here, and then maybe capitalize this word. What else would you like to know?" he asks. Sally answers, "Show me where you sprinkle in the little curvy marks." "Commas," Charlie states. "Whatever," Sally responds with a look of quiet desperation. (Charles Schulz Peanuts). Both the graduate student and Sally, the quintessential frustrated first-grader, know that punctuation is important, but they are baffled by all of the rules. They see punctuation as an afterthought in their composition processes.

Based on my twenty years of experience with junior high, senior high, junior college and university students, I know only too well the points of these cartoons. After lessons and exercises on commas, typical eighth grade students will put commas after every third word in their essays, while high school students place commas after every fifth word. When I questioned these students about their "counting method" for comma insertion, their responses were amazing similar: "You said they were important, but I couldn't remember all those rules. So, I just counted, dropped them in, and hoped that some of them were right." This might also be called the "lottery approach" to punctuation. Most college students have figured out that the counting method is not the best solution; instead, my verbally articulate composition students often turn in essays written in short simple sentences that require almost no punctuation other than a period. When I ask these students why they talk like college students, but write like third graders, their responses usually recall a former teacher or two who graded punctuation so harshly that they have opted for the "safe sentence" approach to writing. We have all read too many of these "counting method" or "safe sentence" essays. But, what are we teachers to do? How do we help students negotiate the traffic jams and stalls of comma and semicolon rules? How do we get them to drive their readers through the meaning of their essays?

I have had success with an instructional analogy that compares grammar, punctuation, composition and reading to driving, one subject that always interests students of all ages and writing abilities. Basically, in this analogy, grammar is the roadbed and various punctuation marks represent different types of traffic signs. When used in effective ways, proper grammar and punctuation drive the reader through the writer's meaning. This analogy demystifies the complicated web-like relationship between grammar, punctuation, and meaning. To make these relationships easier to comprehend and to employ, I have developed a series of equations or formulas that are based on students' inherent linguistic knowledge and are easily applied to their own writing situations.

I must confess that this driving analogy developed quite accidentally (no pun intended). One day, when plodding through comma rules in a 1969 edition of Warriner's Composition and Grammar, I noticed that several of my high school juniors were reading Rules of the Road, required reading for Driver's Education, and probably the only book enthusiastically read by all high school students in America. I seized the moment, and the copies of Rules of the Road, and said -- "Okay, commas are like yield signs; they make the reader pause -- slow down, but not stop like a period which is more like a red traffic light. The students were delighted with the analogy, and a spontaneous discussion about different types of driving "pauses" occurred. Because the students had all been passengers and were aspiring drivers, the road signs and driving analogy interested them. They clearly understood the nuances between traffic signs. The comma became a pause that indicated deceleration, or slowing, like a yield sign, or a dangerous curve sign, or as what some students wanted to call the "questionable" stop sign -- that stop sign in a quiet residential area that drivers slow for, but never really stop for because there is never any traffic. The period became the complete stop -- that red light at the busy intersection. The semicolon generated some interesting discussion because of its place between the comma and the period in the duration of its pause. Finally, the students concluded, after reading some sentences punctuated with semicolons, that the semicolon was more deceleration than a comma, like the 4-way stop sign where the experienced user of the intersection touches the brake pedal and stops momentarily before quickly moving on. One of my "bored-totally-with-English" students came up after class and said, "Hey, Mrs. Burgauer this punctuation thing is cool when we think of it like driving. So, why didn't you tell us this before?" From that moment in 1976, the driving analogy has been a reliable teaching tool which I have continued to use for fourteen years in my college composition courses.

We college writing teachers are often the last line of defense in helping our students understand and use grammar and punctuation effectively. Students come to us with twelve years of formal language instruction, some of which was good and some of which was bad; they also come to us with a lifetime of linguistic knowledge that is often overwhelmed by textbook rules and their exceptions, which students really hate. As I prepared this paper, I revisited my 1969 copy of Warriner's English Grammar and Composition: A Complete Course. It contains sixteen pages of comma rules alone, ending with a complicated summary of eight "major" rules subdivided into "minor" rules which are all written in the formal vocabulary of grammar instruction that only we English teachers could love (642). No wonder my juniors preferred Rules of the Road. Even current handbooks present very detailed and rather lengthy sections on punctuation. For example, Hacker's A Writer's Reference (Second Edition), while user-friendly in format, has 16 pages of rules and explanations for commas. Some texts, such as Strategies for Successful Writing: A Rhetoric, Reader, and Handbook (Reinking, Hart, and Von der Osten) have condensed the rules into six pages. The fifth edition of The Little, Brown Handbook (Fowler, Aaron and Limburg), while discussing commas in depth for 27 pages, does present a clear one page synopsis "Principal Uses of the Comma" (382), which is similar to my equations presented later. Traditionally, punctuation rules are relegated to the closing portion of textbooks, leading student to conclude that the rules are afterthoughts in the composition process. No wonder our students concede defeat and mutter "whatever" like Charlie Brown's sister Sally.

So, we teachers have a complicated task: we must simplify the rules, but not water them down; we must make those rules relevant to our students' composing processes without making students feel punished if they occasionally use a punctuation mark ineffectively -- notice I did not say incorrectly; and we must reinforce those rules in meaningful ways that help students see the relationships between meaning, grammar and punctuation. In a finished piece of writing these three elements depend upon one another; they are not just separate chapters in a textbook that are taught and tested independently. Once again the driving analogy has served me well in accomplishing this complicated three part task because it is interesting enough to appeal to well-prepared students who only need a cursory review, while it is complete enough to reach students who did not learn the connection between grammar and punctuation in high school. We college composition teachers are their last chance at learning these punctuation rules and their effective usage.

On pages seven through ten, I present the material I use to develop the driving analogy between grammar and punctuation. The material easily fits on several transparencies or can be duplicated onto just a few pages. My purposes are to untangle the web of rules, to demystify the use of commas and semicolons, and to link meaning to grammar and punctuation. Students need to understand that punctuation is for their readers (Backschieder 874), not just for their English teachers. Most students of any age are good listeners, and many can punctuate their writing more effectively when they hear it read aloud. As Alan Cruttendan points out in his essay "Intonation and the Comma," the comma historically had an elocutionary function, ". . .unfettered by the prescriptions imposed by publishers and grammarians," and he asserts that the comma should "return to this basic principle of communicative clarity" (77). By reading their texts aloud, students spot areas that need more or less punctuation for clarity. In "Psyching Out Commas: Syntactic and Semantics Relations," J.E. Haney, building on Chomsky's theory, emphasizes that students need knowledge of "the psycholinguistic effects" of punctuation and knowledge of "sentence members" (774). The following equations and condensed rules unify grammar and punctuation.

COMMA = A PAUSE, A DECELERATION, A SLOWING FOR A CURVE, 

        A YIELD SIGN, A QUESTIONABLE STOP SIGN IN A RESIDENTIAL AREA 

PERIOD = A COMPLETE STOP, A RED LIGHT AT A BUSY INTERSECTION 

SEMICOLON = MORE DECELERATION THAN A COMMA WITH THE DRIVER'S 

        FOOT ON THE BRAKE AND THE SPEEDOMETER REACHING ZERO, 

        BUT THE STOP IS MOMENTARY, LIKE A 4-WAY STOP SIGN 

        AT A MODERATELY TRAVELED INTERSECTION

SENTENCE = SUBJECT + VERB + COMPLETE THOUGHT 

        ALL THREE ELEMENTS ARE NEEDED 



FRAGMENT = MAY LOOK LIKE A SENTENCE, 

        BUT LACKS ONE OF THE THREE ELEMENTS 

        = SUBJECT + VERB + NO COMPLETE THOUGHT 

                Subordinate (dependent) clauses fit this equation 

        = NO SUBJECT+ VERB + NO COMPLETE THOUGHT 

                Verbal phrases 

        = SUBJECT + NO VERB + NO COMPLETE THOUGHT

                Noun phrases and appositive phrases 

COMMA SPLICE = Sentence, sentence. 

1. QUICK FIX = CHANGE COMMA TO A SEMICOLON Sentence; sentence.



2. COORDINATING CONJUNCTION REPAIR = Use a coordinating conjunction to show equality of ideas.



        Sentence, and sentence. 

                  but 

                  or 

                  nor 

                  for 

                  yet   (Lunsford St. Martin's 157)



3. SEPARATION FIX = Write as separate sentences, 

        especially if the two sentences are long

        Sentence. Sentence.



4. A MATURE STYLE REPAIR = Use a semicolon, a conjunctive adverb

        (Lunsford St. Martin's 153), and a comma. 

        This is a very "college" thing to do. 

        Sentence; conjunctive adverb, sentence.



5. SUBORDINATE CLAUSE FIX = Change one sentence to a subordinate 

        (dependent) clause using a subordinating conjunction

        (Lunsford St. Martin's 152).

        Subordinate clause, sentence.

        Sentence (sometimes a comma), subordinate clause.



This is an excellent place to introduce the ideas of embedding 

less important sentence details in "Relative Clauses" Unit Two 

in The Writer's Options: Combining to Composing (Fourth Edition)

by Donald Daiker, Andrew Kerek, and Max Morenberg.

Rule: The comma alone is used to separate independent clauses, 

        without any accompanying conjunction, under the following conditions: 



1 . Syntax -- the clauses are short and usually parallel in structure 

        though they can be in any combination of affirmative and negative clauses. 



2. Semantics -- the sentence cannot be potentially ambiguous, 

        and the semantic relationship between the clauses is a paraphrase, 

        repetition, amplification, opposition, addition, or summary. 



3. Style -- the usage level is General English or Informal English. 



4. Rhetorical -- the effect is rapidity of movement and/or emphasis.

        (from Irene Brosnahan's "A Few Good Words for the Comma Splice" 185)



Charles Dickens opens A Tale of Two Cities with two paragraphs 

        of artfully crafted comma splices.

1. (Intro) Introductory "stuff" rule =Introductory element, sentence.

        a word 

        an expression 

        a phrase 

        a subordinate clause

         (Lunsford St. Martin's 436)



2. (CC) Coordinating conjunction rule = Sentence, and sentence. 

                                                  but 

                                                  or 

                                                  nor 

                                                  for 

                                                  yet

                                                  (Lunsford St. Martin's 437) 



3. (ES) Extra "stuff" rule = nonrestrictive elements that do not limit 

        the meaning of the sentence. (Lunsford St. Martin's 438) 

                Subject, EXTRA STUFF/Nonrestrictive  element, verb. 

                Sen, EXTRA STUFF, tence. 



4. (Scom) Series rule = use commas to separate words or phrases

         in a list or series

        A. Adjective, adjective, adjective noun  , = and 

        B. Sentence ending with item #1, item #2, item #3, and item #4. 

        Comma before "and" is optional, but is necessary often times 

                to avoid  confusion. (Lunsford St. Martin's 442)

1. (SS) Sentence; sentence. 

2. (ScaS) Sentence; conjunctive adverb (Lunsford 153), sentence. 

3. (Scol) When a series of items already contain commas, use semicolons 

        to avoid confusion.

                item, #1; item, #2; and item, #3. 

                for example: name, title; name, title; and name, title.

The material on pages seven through ten is sequenced to build from simple linguistic knowledge of what makes a "complete" sentence, to explaining briefly when comma splices may be correct and effective, to reviewing the most important and useful comma and semicolon rules. The use of equations especially appeals to students who are more mathematically inclined and who often do not do well with rules written in long sentences. In fact, many students have told me that they like this "uncluttered" format and really like knowing that only two notebook pages can help them solve most of their punctuation confusion. As one student said, "Hey, Mrs. Burgauer, I really love this. It's so K.I.S.S. (Keep It Simple Stupid)."

But, as we all know, two pages in a notebook will not insure effectively written and punctuated essays. The next step is for students to "know" the grammar/punctuation relationship. In "Teaching Grammar to Writers," Neuleib and Brosnahan point out that we teachers must understand the grammar ourselves and teach students "to demonstrate" their knowledge through stylistic choices (32). Here again the driving analogy is useful. I discuss how an essay of short, simple sentences is like driving through suburban shopping areas with complete traffic light stops every block or two. We get to our destination, but it is not an interesting drive. On the other hand, an essay of long overloaded or run-on sentences can be like the blur of interstate travel. Most students agree that a "fun" drive entails a variety of interesting scenery. Now the argument for stylistic choices in grammar and punctuation becomes clear to students as they realize that they can choose the road and its traffic signs that will make the reader's "drive" through the essay eventful and memorable. To promote stylistic choices, I use mini-lessons with sentence combining techniques, and in conferences with students, we mark areas in their essays where stylistic variation is needed. To further promote stylistic choices, my students do peer response activities which encourage them to punctuate sound, structure, and meaning (Sabin 78).

This fall I plan to use more strategies to reinforce the effective use of punctuation in relationship to grammar. On first "public" drafts used for peer response, students will indicate with an abbreviation (CC, Intro, ES, S) the rule that justifies their use of a comma. Then as students read each others' drafts, they will use highlighters to question the use of a particular mark or to indicate that a mark is needed (Timmons 20). For students who use word processing programs, I will suggest Timothy Giles' strategy for using "search" as a grammar checker (28-31). By typing in "," or "and" (or any other coordinating conjunction or conjunctive adverb) after the search command, students can check for comma and semicolon usage. Especially useful with WordPerfect, this search strategy gives students more focused information than a lengthy Writers' Workbench printout because the student can target specific types of revision. Also, they see the text as the cursor scans for specific items, and they can correct it easily without major word processing hassles.

While some students and teachers may think that the driving analogy oversimplifies the relationship between grammar and punctuation, I would argue that writing and driving are parallel in their complexity and in their simplicity. Both tasks require clear understanding of rules and precise application of them. Yet, each writing and driving experience is unique, challenging us to rely on what we already know, while also adding to our knowledge of these two tasks. Whether we want to admit it or not, teaching is a performance art. We need to use analogy to make our lessons meaningful and entertaining to our students. I love it when students tell me after class that they now "finally" know what a comma splice is because the equation definition has made it clear to them, or when they say that they feel confident in "listening" to their writing and punctuating more "by ear" than by guesswork. No writer, professional or student, wants to lose the audience or steer them in the wrong direction. The effective use of grammar and punctuation drives readers through essays to meaning-filled destinations.

Brosnahan, Irene Teoh. "A Few Good Words for the Comma Splice." College English 38.2 (1976): 184-88.

Cruttenden, Alan. "Intonation and the Comma." Visible Language 25.1 (1991): 54-73.

Daiker, Donald A., Andrew Kerek, and Max Morenberg. The Writer's Options: Combining to Composing. 4th ed. New York: Harper and Row, 1990.

Fowler, H. Ramsey., Jane E. Aaron, and Kay Limburg. The Little, Brown Handbook. 5th ed. New York: Harper Collins, 1992.

Giles, Timothy D. "Ideas in Practice: The Search Key as a Grass-roots Grammar Checker." Journal of Developmental Education 16.3 (1993): 28-31.

Hacker, Diana. A Writer's Reference. 2nd ed. New York: Bedford Books of St. Martin's, 1992.

Haney, J.E. "Psyching Out Commas: Syntactic and Semantic Relations." College Composition and Communication 21.2 (1970): 173-76.

Lunsford, Andrea., and Robert Connors. The St. Martin's Handbook. 2nd ed. New York: St. Martin's Press, 1992.

Neuleib, Janice., and Irene Brosnahan. "Teaching Grammar to Writers." Journal of Basic Writing 6.1 (1987): 28-35.

Reinking, James A., Andrew W. Hart, and Robert Von der Osten. Strategies for Successful Writing: A Rhetoric, Reader, and Handbook. 3rd ed. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall, 1993.

Sabin, William A. "The Comma Trauma." Journal of Educational Communication (Fall 1976): 16-8.

Timmons, Theresa Cullen. "Marking Errors: A Simple Strategy." Teaching English in the Two-Year College 14.1 (1987): 78-21.

Warriner, John E., and Francis Griffith. English Grammar and Composition: Complete Course. New York: Harcourt, Brace, and World, Inc., 1969.