"The less punctuation marks, taken in isolation, convey meaning or expression and the more they constitute the opposite pole in language names, the more each of them acquires a definitive physiognomic status of its own, an expression of its own, which cannot be separated from its syntactic function but is by no means exhaused by it. (...) Even text, even the most densely woven, cites them of its own accord -- friendly spirits whose bodiless presence nourishes the body of language. There is no element in which language resembles music more than in the punctuation marks. The comma and the period correspond to the half-cadence and the authentic cadence. Exclamation points are like silent cymbal clashes, question marks like musical upbeats, colons dominant seventh chords; and only a person who can perceive the different weights of strong and weak phrasings in musical form can really feel the distinction between the comma and the semicolon. (...) - Amira

"Literary dilettantes can be recognized by their desire to connect everything. Their products hook sentences together with logical connectives even though the logical relationship asserted by those connectives does not hold. To the person who cannot truly conceive anything as a unit, anything that suggests disintegration or discontinuity is unbearable; only a person who can grasp totality can understand caesuras. But the dash provides instruction in them. In the dash, thought becomes aware of its fragmentary character. It is no accident that in the era of the progressive degeneration of language, this mark of punctuation is neglected precisely insofar as it fulfills its function: when it separates things that feign a connection. All the dash claims to do now is to prepare us in a foolish way for surprises that by that very token are no longer surprising. (...) The test of a writer's sensitivity in punctuating is the way he handles parenthetical material. (...)" - Amira

This is interesting, but it is about written texts (in some modern languages; in many languages/skripts and in ancient languages there are innumerous texts without any punctuation marks, often even without marks that separate words) and script usage, not about language as such. - Maitani

Thoroughly enjoyable. - Goran Zec