Barney Zwartz, former Religion Editor of The Age writes about teaching punctuation and grammar. It has to do with faith, and uderstanding the purpose of life, according to Barney.
My new T-shirt arrived the other day, from a design-your-own slogan outlet in the US. The three lines are: “Let’s eat kids./ Let’s eat, kids./ Punctuation saves lives.” My grammar obsession dates back decades. In previous lives I lectured theology students on grammar so they could learn Greek, as well as newspaper sub-editors.
I am not puritanical: grammatical guidelines enhance communication, but they are not set in stone and do evolve (go on, split that infinitive!). My T-shirt highlights that a tiny piece of punctuation can change meaning in profoundly important ways.
