Readers draw on prior knowledge and past experience to infer the appropriate meaning. How we discuss a text is directly related to how we read that text. The reader's eye may scan the page, but the reader's mind ranges up, down, and sideways, piecing together evidence to make sense of the presentation as a whole. Meaning is contained not so much in individual words as in collections of words conveying broader or more specific ideas. Readers read punctuation as well as words.
Punctuation reflects an author's analysis of a sentence.
We read with attention to both the content and the structure of the sentences, to both the thought expressed and the grammatical structure. Each informs the other. All rights reserved. This Web page may be linked to other Web pages.