Friday, January 11, 2008

Punctuation is Powerful

A professor wrote the following on the blackboard: "A woman without her man is nothing." The students were asked to punctuate the phrase.
Some students wrote: "A woman, without her man, is nothing."
Others wrote: "A woman: without her, man is nothing."
How would you punctuate it?

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Might I suggest the book "Eats, Shoots and Leaves" which takes it's title from the dictionary definition of a panda and illustrates just how punctuation can change the meaning of a sentence. Happy, reading!