ickle.org » punctuation

You are very familiar with them, but how often do you underestimate their presence? Colons, semicolons, commas, dashes, apostrophes, and periods can be more important than the actual words you are writing. One might imagine that punctuation is insignificant when reading or writing prose. A missing comma here, a missing period there, what's the difference, right?

Consider the following quotation from "The Art of War" by Sun Tzu of which I

have removed all punctuation:

simulated disorder postulates perfect discipline simulated fear postulates courage simulated weakness postulates strength hiding order beneath the cloak of disorder is simply a question of subdivision concealing courage under a show of timidity presupposes a fund of latent energy masking strength with weakness is to be effected by tactical dispositions

It doesn't have nearly the same effect as it would have. The smallest absence of punctuation (or in this case, absence entirely) can change a work entirely.

SA