If a period is a stop sign, then what kind of traffic flow is created by other marks? The comma is a speed bump; the semicolon is what a driver education teacher calls a “rolling stop”; the parenthetical expression is a detour; the colon is a flashing yellow light that announces something important up ahead; the dash is a tree branch in the road.
Interpretation
This quote uses traffic signs and signals as metaphors for different punctuation marks to illustrate their functions in writing.
Roy Peter Clark creatively compares punctuation marks to traffic signs and road conditions, suggesting that just as these signs guide drivers through the roadways, punctuation guides readers through written texts. Each mark plays a distinct role, indicating pauses, transitions, and emphasis that shape the reader's understanding and experience of the written message.
In practice
In a writing workshop, I used this quote to demonstrate the importance of punctuation.
False taste is always busy to mislead those that are entering upon the regions of learning; and the traveller, uncertain of his way, and forsaken by the sun, will be pleased to see a fainter orb arise on the horizon, that may rescue him from total darkness, though with weak and borrowed lustre.
John Hall, my geography teacher at school inspired me to a lifelong interest in geography and a curiosity about our world which has stayed with me through my life. Geography is a living, breathing subject, constantly adapting itself to change. It is dynamic and relevant. For me geography is a great adventure with a purpose.
You have to know human behaviour … And the quality of your writing is absolutely capped at your understanding of human behaviour. You’ll never write above what you know about people.
Sports and entertainment are the only places where inner-city kids see themselves being able to succeed. Their intellectual development is something they don't relate to.
Play is a child's work and this is not a trivial pursuit.
The great majority of Americans do not know much about Islam but nonetheless fear it as violent, expansionist and alien to their society. The problem to overcome is not hatred, but ignorance.
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