On demand: Make your mark!

Do you know how many languages there are in this world? Well, I don’t know either but I am sure there are thousands of them. Still, there can only be one language that is truly universal and that’s English. Why is that? Well, I am sure very intelligent people from all parts of the world must have come to a consensus and they must have agreed that this was the most comprehensive, easy to learn, easy to use and ‘complete in every sense’ language. Yes, it’s a beautiful language. To use it correctly while speaking and writing is quite important I feel. While I touched on some of the glitches introduced in the language cause of the speaking part, I feel like talking about the writing part today.
What I intend to focus on is punctuation marks. The thoughts that may arise are “Are they really that important?” or “Isn’t conveying the idea my aim here?”. Well, yes, they are important and I’ll try and present my case here. Now let us say there is some British man who had little formal education (but obviously can use a computer… anyone can!!!!) and there is some well-educated friend of yours on the other hand. Both these people are equally mature in the thought process department. Both know english. The two of them write you an e-mail each. What’s the difference between the them? How do you think one can tell who is educated and who is not? Is there no difference? Does it not matter? Or maybe formal education is over-rated, what say?
You do see where I am going with this, don’t you? In today’s world, the smallest things are the ones that are magnified and cited as evidences of traits. Why is it that the bigger things are ignored? I don’t know. Maybe they look the same for everyone. Maybe people have learnt to cover them up in some way. Maybe, after knowing that people are disguising their bigger flaws, we don’t trust the ‘bigger things’ to judge people.
Now I’ll get back to the point at hand before I digress. Today, everyone can speak English. Everyone can write. Harbhajan Singh learnt how to speak well. The Pakistani ex-cricket players are commentating and if they can do that much, they can write too you know. But not everyone can punctuate correctly. It is THE thing that can set people apart. It can increase the value of what you write, enhance the reader’s interest, increase clarity and again… place you above others!
But then there is this other set of people who say, “I don’t care about all this. I just want to convey my idea.” Well, for them, all I have to say is check out the comments section of this post. I have de-punctuated a couple of lines and posted them there.
Don’t forget the small marks... For they make a big difference!