Our next sentence, which is from Balzac, will illustrate the points we are considering, and also show the difficulties the punctuator meets in the punctuation of language which he may not change:
61. He was all that a hero should be; he suffered long, and came into his own, and he has been, in a measure, the world’s ideal of a heroic man of arms.
According to most rules of punctuation based upon grammatical relations, this punctuation is correct; according to the principles of punctuation based upon sense relations, this punctuation is very bad. The obscurity in the meaning of the language cannot be wholly removed by punctuation. Two simple statements are made in the sentence, and are coördinated by the second conjunction (and); but the language is so grouped by the punctuation as to conceal this fact. We can show the meaning by a different mode of punctuation, which, however, is not good punctuation. Such punctuation will show the relation because the meaning of the marks used is familiar to most readers:
61-1. He was all that a hero should be (he suffered long, and came into his own); and he has been, in a measure, the world’s idea of a heroic man of arms.
The parentheses show the relation of the matter so enclosed to what has preceded; but the matter so set off is not a parenthesis, and therefore the use of the marks of parenthesis is not good punctuation. It is true that the matter so set off is explanatory matter; but it is an expansion of the idea preceding it, and therefore should be preceded by a colon.
Having determined that a colon is the proper mark after this first group of words, we must then determine where the second group ends. It is quite evident that “came into his own” is joined to “suffered long,” even though coming into one’s own is no part of what constitutes a hero. We simply accept the words at Balzac’s estimate.
The meaning of the next group, introduced by the second “and,” is unmistakable; and the group is coordinate in sense, and is connected by the conjunction, with all that precedes. If the group preceding the conjunction is subdivided by a colon, even though the colon here is not used solely because of its rank, it is well to ignore this technicality, and use a period, thus unmistakably and properly grouping the language.
This reasoning would give us the following punctuation:
61-2. He was all that a hero should be: he suffered long, and came into his own. And he has been, in a measure, the world’s ideal of a heroic man of arms.
The period here connects the second sentence with all of the preceding sentence, at once disconnecting the second sentence from the second clause of the first sentence, of which it is made an unmistakable part in the original sentence (No. 61).