PUNCTUATION.
A staid old axiom has it that "art and education are twin sisters," but the examples of punctuation as seen in wagon lettering often met with suggest the inference that the vehicle letterer is not slow, at times, to offer a startling contradiction to the axiom. The sense of construction and meaning can be quickly and effectually destroyed in a piece of lettering by a bit of bad punctuation. The simple misplacing of a comma, period, or apostrophe,—about the only punctuation marks deemed necessary at present to bring out the full meaning and make symmetrical a job of vehicle lettering—often results in disfiguring an otherwise really meritorious piece of work. The late Mr. Geo. W. W. Houghton has defined the object of punctuation, "to so divide written or printed sentences that the meaning may be made more visibly clear."
In vehicle lettering as now practiced the more striking and illuminative words and phrases are set forth in separate lines, each line, as a rule, carrying a different size and a different style of letter. This system of vividly illuminating and emphasizing vehicle lettering has reduced the need of punctuation to the minimum; but it renders the necessity of a wise and judicious use of punctuation marks none the less imperative. In no way that we are aware of can the information which a line of lettering is intended to convey be so clearly perverted as through the medium of a flagrant error in punctuation. A sweep of lettering done according to the most approved standard of letter form and construction, but improperly punctuated, is at best only a distorted and deformed example of workmanship. The advertising pages of the big magazines offer fine advantages for the accumulation of reliable "pointers" upon the accepted practice of modern newspaper and magazine punctuation. To such sources the reader is invited to go if he would profit by the examples set forth by acknowledged masters of the art of punctuation.