As texting, tweeting, posting, and email take over written communication, a generation gap has developed. In this article on forbes.com, Writer’s Relief found that twenty-somethings often interpret punctuation as a subtle expression of sternness—especially ending a sentence with a (gasp!) period. Yes. It’s true. Much to the dismay of grammar gurus everywhere, punctuation is making younger and not-as-young people read the same text in different voices!
Find out more about which punctuation marks are falling by the wayside here.
Punctuation is one of the grammatical means (instead of intonation when speaking). It works to make the content of the sentence coherent, the extract; separating elements in sentence structure.