Illusion of Punctuation

A favorite artist of mine is M.C. Escher. I am a huge fan of his optical-illusionist style. There’s something about the trick of an illusion that many people find appealing, particularly in our image-driven society. For example, take a look at the following image. What do you see?

Some people will immediately see a white vase in the center of a black background. Others will see two shadow profiles looking at one another against a white backdrop. It all depends on what you see as the positive and negative in this picture. So what does this have to do with journalism? In the same way that a play on the positive and negative space of a picture can make an image appear to be something it isn’t, subtle changes in punctuation can make an entire paragraph have completely different meanings. Our professor gave a good example of this in class on Monday night. She presented us with this letter and asked us to fill in the punctuation:


Dear John
I want a man who knows what love is all about you are generous kind thoughtful people who are not like you admit to being useless and inferior you have ruined me for other men I yearn for you I have no feelings whatsoever when we are apart I can be forever happy will you let me be yours
Gloria


I, along with the rest of the class, ended up with something like this:


Dear John,
I want a man who knows what love is all about. You are generous, kind, thoughtful. People who are not like you admit to being useless and inferior. You have ruined me for other men. I yearn for you. I have no feelings whatsoever when we are apart. I can be forever happy—will you let me be yours?
Gloria


This version, though possibly leading one to wonder about Gloria’s mental health, is really pretty positive. Who wouldn’t want to be so thoroughly admired?


That’s where the illusion of punctuation comes in. With nothing more than some simple re-placements of periods, commas and the like, you end up with a very different letter:


Dear John,
I want a man who knows what love is. All about you are generous, kind and thoughtful people who are not like you. Admit to being useless and inferior. You have ruined me. For other men I yearn. For you I have no feelings whatsoever. When we are apart, I can be forever happy. Will you let me be?
Yours, Gloria


Who appears to be the one with the mental issues now? I thought this exercise was very effective in helping to prove the importance of punctuation in writing. Although we’ve developed some pretty good tools for getting a certain tone across in today’s online writing (e.g. use of emoticons, USE OF CAPS LOCK TO SHOUT IT OUT) there is no replacement for good grammar and use of punctuation. Unlike optical illusions, which tend to break the rules of how we process visual information, punctuation serves as a kind of boundary for our mind to make sense of what would otherwise be a confusing, jumbled mess. However…dun jst tAk my wrd 4 it. Try sndN n somTIN lIk DIS 4 yor college entrance essay, o a job app!