Why We Punctuate; or, Reason Versus Rule in the Use of Marks

by William Livingston Klein

65. Ethics has no summons to righteousness: it knows nothing of truth spiritually discerned.

If a period were used here, instead of the colon, the relation between the two sentences (clauses formed into sentences by the use of the period) might easily be taken for the and relation. With such relation between the clauses, the first clause would make a vague assertion, which, without an explanation, would convey no definite meaning.

In our discussion of Sentence 6 we saw that the colon, preceding “but,” made the but relation extend back over several clauses separated by semicolons. “But” may begin a sentence, a paragraph, a part of a book, or even a volume. When beginning any one of such groups, the but relation should be a well-defined sense relation between the groups so connected. If “but” begins a paragraph, the sense relation must be between the two paragraphs connected by the conjunction. Such relation is rarely sustained between long paragraphs; and it does not exist between sentences nearly so often as it is indicated by the use of the conjunction and the period.

But, and, and for are the principal conjunctions thus used, although others are not infrequently so used.

COMMA AND SEMICOLON

The differentiation of the semicolon from the colon, and the colon from the period, seems to be so well marked that a choice between them is rarely difficult to make in the punctuation of language with proper sense relations between its parts; but the differentiation between the comma and the semicolon is not so well defined, yet it is generally very clear in well-written English. Here the choice of a mark is determined, very largely, by the degree of separation between the groups. In order further to illustrate this point, let us compare No. 63 with a sentence which is quite like it, and yet requires only a comma between its clauses:

66. Experience is fallacious, and judgment difficult.

The first three words of the above form a clause which so completely expresses a thought that the addition, by means of the “and,” of another adjective to follow “fallacious,” is hardly suggested. On the other hand, this degree of completeness might suggest that what is to follow will be a complete clause so changing the direction of the thought as to require a semicolon to show the fact of the change. Let us look at the sentence diagrammatically:

66-1. Experience is fallacious and....