I have to agree with large parts of what James Adcock says. A lot of it depends on the medium (media in fact), the message, and so on. When I write (without any interest in whether I should be writing or not, or whether anyone cares) there is considerable rumination, not to mention bellyaching, about punctuation, font, typeface, formatting and so on, in fact practically anything that could be done in more than one way. The fundamental thing is information. Alternative ways of representing the information require information to convey them, and offer opportunities for conveying the information. Well-conveyed information is in that respect at least, beautiful. The reason that most of my presentations are fairly spare is that most of what I have to say is fairly directly factual. Conspicuous headings, distinct tables of contents, and clear meanings are usually enough for my purposes because I am no artist. The reason I struggle with punctuation is that I have my own rules, and bugger the grammarians. My rules are: If the punctuation doesn't matter, leave it out. If it changes the meaning, it does matter. Put it in. If it does not really change the meaning, but the reader needs to read something twice to make sense of it, adapt the punctuation, the sentence structure, or even the wording, to provide unconscious, one-pass parsing. If omitting (or inserting) logically unnecessary punctuation is likely to distract or confuse the reader, then don't or do, as the case might be. Know something about common conventions and their significances so that you have some idea of what to flaunt and what to flout. That about somes it up, sum of it anyway. If that is how simple it is, why is it so complicated? Because I am lousy at noticing when I violate those rules. Many people are not that that is more of an excuse than an explanation. Recently I helped I think a friend with a book that he had written in German and translated into English. The book was a straightforward work of philosophy, so it should have been easy. Unfortunately, though he is literate and intelligent, he had absent-mindedly retained a lot of the German commas. It rendered reading of the book such hard work that I could not read it in bulk. I was doing double-takes every few sentences, which was more than was needed to ruin my concentration and wreck my attempts to remain coherently aware of the thread of significance. A sign of mine being a lesser intellect according to Whitehead? Definitely, but remember not only that the average intellect is less than lesser, but what is worse, it is less lesser than half the population. The lesser is who you are writing for more or lesser always. Consider "It is a long tail, certainly,' said Alice, looking down with wonder at the Mouse's tail; 'but why do you call it sad?' And she kept on puzzling about it while the Mouse was speaking, so that her idea of the tale was something like this: 'Fury said to a mouse, That he met in the house, "Let us both go to law: I will prosecute you. --Come, I'll take no denial; We must have a trial: For really this morning I've nothing to do." Said the mouse to the cur, "Such a trial, dear Sir, With no jury or judge, would be wasting our breath." "I'll be judge, I'll be jury," Said cunning old Fury: "I'll try the whole cause, and condemn you to death."' 'You are not attending!' said the Mouse to Alice severely. 'What are you thinking of?' 'I beg your pardon,' said Alice very humbly: 'you had got to the fifth bend, I think?' 'I had NOT!' cried the Mouse, sharply and very angrily." Then again, pace archy, how about something like: "Wenn hinter fliegen fliegen fliegen fliegen fliegen fliegen hinternach" or "smith who when jones had had had had had had had had had had had the judgement of the examiners in his favour" Or which would fit the writer's intention better: "You would be the lad for that." or "You would be the lad for that." or "You would be the lad for that." How many ways with more or less distinct meanings could one place the emphasis in "Two twenty-buck tickets for her show I should buy"? If anyone does not believe that punctuation matters, try reading "Eats shoots and leaves" by Lynne Truss. (If you haven't read it anyway, do yourself a favour and read it anyway.) Now all that is great fun, compared to waiting for Godot with a hangover in a hot public lavatory at the terminus of a diesel trucking company in Houston, but if you actually wish to write (or convey someone else's writing) with efficiency and with respect for the information, the author, and the reader, then you will use all the channels of information that the medium (media, funiculi, funicula ) that assist without increasing the noise to signal ratio. The fact that some authors don't need or want it is irrelevant. The right amount is what works best, and if he wants nothing, that is the right amount. It does not follow that it is the right amount elsewhere. The fact that your reader can get no end of fun out of Joyce without punctuation, does not mean that the same must apply for figurate verse or calligraphic works. The medium is rarely the message unless the message is about the medium, unless you are in one of the bottom-feeding niches, or a great artist, but to gird at more powerful notations because less can be made to do, for some people, mostly, with some exertion, is poorly persuasive, let alone cogent. I never did like Gertrude Stein. I don't know when where or how anyone will come up with the generally universally and perfect notation. (I know when I think they will, but that is another story.) All I ask is that they please make it something that can be read with a vanilla text reader, no instruction manual, and some patience, even if the proper markup interpreter on a great audiovisual system or tiny cellphone can give a mind-blasting performance. Personally I would like it to start with the vanilla text and punctuation and have the markups follow as an appendix, to be ignored when unwanted or not understood. Patience upon a rock Smiling at grief Because she is wearing ear plugs. (Of course?) In my case I am privileged because I am not dependent on pure txt. If necessary I can convert PDF, though I have never learned its internal format. Cheers, Jon