I agree! Punctuation is fundamental.

Up until reading this chapter on the importance of punctuation and how it’s fundamental to the writing process and meaning, I thought I was flying solo on this position. The impression that I had taken from several past “fish bowl” discussions, was that many people felt like punctuation and grammar just weren’t that significant in comparison to the content of a writing piece. But I completely disagree, and I’m glad Cordeiro agrees with me.

Don’t get me wrong, I believe the content in a piece of writing is crucial—if you have amazing punctuation and grammar, but the writing doesn’t impact or move the reader, you have nothing. However, I agree with Cordeiro when he/she says: “punctuation—ranging from the small, subtle comma to the large, overt paragraph—helps re-create the writer’s meaning for the reader. And in the process of being applied to a written text, punctuation helps the writer understand the writer’s own meaning.” Exactly! Without proper punctuation, it will be difficult for the reader and the writer to understand the context and meaning of their writing. For example, in the story of an imaginary first-grader named Dora, her writing always made sense in her head, but when it came out on paper without correct punctuation and convention use, her thoughts would never make sense to a reader. But through an extensive process of writing, reading her work out-loud, and re-writing, she was able to express her thoughts in a clearer way.

I appreciated in Cordeiro’s story about Dora, how the teacher was intentional about talking about and listening to the children’s explanations of their writing and thinking process. You could see throughout the story, how that practice helped Dora significantly in developing hypotheses and ways to correct her punctuation use—and on her own. The method that the teacher used reminds me a lot of Anderson, and his desire/practice of allowing students to write and think through their own mistakes. Anderson is even quoted in this chapter saying, “By allowing children to reflect on, and discuss the way language is used both by them and around them we give them the possibility to extend and refine their strategies.”

In some ways, Cordeiro’s teaching strategies that she describes in the story about Dora, correlate with what Kiel talked about in her chapter about reading. When Dora had difficulty figuring out where sentences needed to be correctly punctuated, the teacher would have her read through a short picture book in the classroom, and compare her writing/punctuation with the books. It was clear throughout Dora’s learning process, that this practice helped significantly. And it was something tangible for her to refer to. Kiel described in her segment, that reading was crucial for a students writing development—with punctuation, sentence fluency, vocabulary, etc. Again it is proven to be true in Dora’s experience—reading is key!

One sort-of random thing in this chapter that I questioned was on pg. 57, Cordeiro quotes Meyer saying, “…and is perhaps more likely to adhere to the prescriptive rule that orthographic sentences should not begin with ‘and’ or ‘but.’” Contrary to this statement, I recently discovered that this rule should be thrown out the window! So I question (only a little) the credibility of this author that Cordeiro for some reason decided to include.