A Lesson in
"Comma Sense"

Lederer presents a few more instances where the correct punctuation makes a world of difference.

Surely the intent was…

To conclude this lesson, provide students with the following text of a love letter set in all lower-case letters. Simply copy and paste the text below into a word document. Use your word processor's font and type size settings to make the text large enough to fill up a page.

my dear pat, the dinner we shared the other night -- it was absolutely lovely not in my wildest dreams could i ever imagine anyone as perfect as you are could you -- if only for a moment -- think of our being together forever what a cruel joke to have you come into my life only to leave again it would be heaven denied the possibility of seeing you again makes me giddy with joy i face the time we are apart with great sadness john p.s.: i would like to tell you that i love you i can't stop thinking that you are one of the prettiest women on earth

Challenge students to work on their own or in pairs to punctuate the text of the love letter so that it makes sense. Give students 10 or 15 minutes to complete the task (more if they are rewriting the text). Then correct the text as a class. Let students share their suggested corrections. The end result is that the love letter text probably looks like this:

My Dear Pat,
The dinner we shared the other night -- it was absolutely lovely! Not in my wildest dreams could I ever imagine anyone as perfect as you are. Could you -- if only for a moment - think of our being together forever? What a cruel joke to have you come into my life only to leave again; it would be heaven denied. The possibility of seeing you again makes me giddy with joy. I face the time we are apart with great sadness.
John
P.S.: I would like to tell you that I love you. I can't stop thinking that you are one of the prettiest women on earth.

Just for fun, share with students Lederer's other version of this punctuated love letter (scroll down to the second copy of it). As you can see… save for some misplaced punctuation, that love letter might have taken a very nasty turn!

You might end the lesson by sharing some of Lederer's observations about the English language. Especially fun are his Crazy English Essays.

Extra Challenge
Close the lesson with one additional humorous exercise in punctuation. Provide the following statement for students:

a woman without her man is nothing

Challenge students to punctuate that sentences in two ways so that it will have two quite different meanings. The results might be…

Assessment

Provide students with an unpunctuated paragraph. Challenge them to think critically and grammatically as they make corrections to the paragraph.

Lesson Plan Source

EducationWorld.com with resources from http://verbivore.com/

Submitted By

Gary Hopkins

National Standards 

LANGUAGE ARTS: English
GRADES K - 12
NL-ENG.K-12.2 Reading for Understanding
NL-ENG.K-12.3 Evaluation Strategies
NL-ENG.K-12.12 Applying Language Skills

See more Lesson Plans of the Day in our Lesson Plan of the Day Archive. (There you can search for lessons by subject too.)

For additional language arts/reading lesson plans, see these Education World resources: