The Use of Punctuation in the Writing of Libyan Students

Punctuation in English

Parkes (1992), in his invaluable study of the history of punctuation, states:

"Punctuation was developed by stages which coincided with changing patterns of literacy, whereby new generations of readers in different historical situations imposed new demands on the written medium itself' (p. 2).

Punctuation is not a static model and even if we confine the discussion to early modern and modern English, it has changed quite considerably across time (Numberg, 1999). The uses of punctuation are conventional; they change over time and vary from language to language. There have been to be conventions or rules, for without these, punctuation would be wholly idiosyncratic and the possibilities of using it to facilitate effective communication would be either lost of severely hindered (Beard & et al., 2009). Some rules of punctuation are mandatory: if we violate them, we have made mistakes in punctuation. Others are optional: our choice is basing on the effect and emphasis we desire to deliver. To that extent, Greenbaum and Nelson (2002: 183) say “punctuation is an art.”

There was a considerable debate between two schools: one believed punctuation should be based on elocution (how a sentence is spoken when it is read out aloud) and the other believed punctuation should be based on the grammar (Petit: 2003; Curtis, 2007; Hall and Robinson, 1996; Parkes, 1992). The latter (the syntactic-based approach) is the one we use today, which means the debate was won by grammar school. Recently, Dawkins (2003 and 1995) has come out with a new believe: teaching punctuation should be based on the meaning (the semantic- based approach). Dawkins (2003) assumes that writers have an intuitive sense of the independent claus...

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..., p. 349). Moreover, Chiang (1999) claims that in EFL writing, the sentence(s) may appear to be appropriate order, but in incongruent places due to inappropriate use or non use of punctuation.

Using the premise that students often have weak language skills, Warner (1979) surveyed 431 postsecondary students using four tools: student’s scores on an objective test, an in-class writing sample, an editing exercise, and a questionnaire about background in English and attitude toward grammar and writing. She found that the largest number of errors in the writing occurred in punctuation. She came out with:

The high error rate in punctuation resulted from 1) the students not knowing the rules of punctuation, 2) knowing the rules but not being able to apply them to their own writing, or 3) constructing such poor sentences that correct punctuation was impossible (p.18).