Punctuation orders thought and clarifies communication. There are rules for its use, which I will leave to our Style Maven to share. I'm headed into more creative territory, where writers also view punctuation as a series of pauses and stops that can order a reader’s emotional response to the work. Noah Lukeman wrote a book about it: A Dash of Style: The Art and Mastery of Punctuation . Think punctuation is too dry to hold your interest? Think again. This book kept me reading until its final period, which comes shortly after this insight: If you cultivate awareness and are willing to learn, punctuation will perpetually teach you something new about yourself. As we learned throughout the book, punctuation reveals the writer, and revelation is the first step toward self-awareness. If you are willing to listen to what the page is telling you about yourself, and humble enough to change, you will become a better writer. I find this claim irresistible. Here are three excerpt...