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People who write hectoring books on punctuation (well, Lynne Truss, to be specific) generally have little sense of the purpose and role of rules. Sure, they may give a little explanation as to why punctuation is necessary, but, come the substance of the book - the rules of grammar, this will be forgotten. Instead, they will be charging around , wailing, pointing fingers and shouting loudly, caught up in the excitement of denunciation, like seventeenth-century Salemites.

The favourite practice of such practioners is this:
- people don't know how to punctuate correctly;
- punctuation makes the obscure clear, the vague precise, the sick well, etc.;
- people should learn to punctuate correctly.
All very well you might think; what right thinking person could object? The problem exists here though - the rules of punctuation are historical conventions (though never officially ratified), broken and illogical. The clear mind when faced with this obscurity, does not become enlightened, but, rather, inspissated. Here are a couple of examples:
Lynne Truss says that ones, as in ones own view', should be one's'. This is completely contrary to every other personal pronoun. It is totally irrational. So how does Lynne Truss defend this offence to common reason? She says, to those that offer the opposite view: "This is such rubbish that I refuse to argue about it." The response of someone who is certain about their reasons for defending punctuation. But is it a religious certainty or a scientific reasoning? Does she believe that if she bluffs high enough no-one will call to see her hand?
Lynne Truss also gives as a rule that you should include punctuation inside the speech marks if it is part of what is said. Examples are:
"Wow! That's amazing!" John exclaimed; and,
"Wow! That's amazing! Can I see?" John asked.
So far, so good. But look at these sentences:
"I was looking at her," said John.
"All day long," John said.
It is clear that the punctuation used at the end of each set of speech marks should be a full stop following Lynne Truss' rule. But instead a comma appears. From where? If we were to induce from the !' and ?' that speech used the correct punctuation mark, even if the sentence continued, we'd be wrong. This is because we were being rational.

The number of examples of this kind is staggering, so I'm not going to waste your time enumerating them. Instead, I'll give my opinion on what should be done; what the real value of punctuation is; and how to ensure its survival.

Let us first

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