A lot of people underestimate the importance of punctuation. “What’s the use of commas and full stops?” you hear people whine. “It stops you from expressing yourself,” “It constrains you.” The list goes on. This is far from the truth.

How would you punctuate the following sentence?

woman without her man is nothing

Men punctuated it like this:

Woman, without her man, is nothing.

Women, on the other hand, punctuated it like this:

Woman: without her, man is nothing.

You see the importance of punctuation? The same words punctuated in two ways give two very different messages.

Let’s have a look at another example. Consider this as a heading:

Elegance, Simplicity and Ease

It seems like a mediocre heading; nothing special.

Now look at this:

Elegance. Simplicity. Ease.

What happened? These ‘dots’ have transformed the whole sentence from an assertive statement to one that has feeling and emotion. Technically, they are supposed to separate sentences. Each of the three words has now become a sentence in its own right.

Grammatically, this means that there must be an ellipsis; a hidden word or phrase that completes the meaning of each sentence. So in essence, by changing the punctuation of the heading, the reader’s imagination has been given a chance to work. What could the author mean?

The essence of elegance.
Elegance is defined here.
Elegance is our way of life.

The possibilities are endless.

So punctuation does matter. Do you have any other examples where punctuation makes all the difference?