Introduction to Literature

Lessons

Senior 4 · Literature in English

Introduction to Literature

5 lessons

Lesson 5 of 5

Written Literature, and Punctuation: the Voice on the Page

25 min

Try reading this aloud, with expression, on the first attempt:

the mole had been working very hard all the morning spring cleaning his little home first with brooms then with dusters then on ladders and steps and chairs with a brush and a pail of whitewash till he had dust in his throat and eyes and splashes of whitewash all over his black fur and an aching back and weary arms

Now read it as Kenneth Grahame published it, in the first paragraph of The Wind in the Willows (1908):

The Mole had been working very hard all the morning, spring-cleaning his little home. First with brooms, then with dusters; then on ladders and steps and chairs, with a brush and a pail of whitewash; till he had dust in his throat and eyes, and splashes of whitewash all over his black fur, and an aching back and weary arms.
Kenneth Grahame, The Wind in the Willows (1908), Chapter 1

The words are the same; the second version can be read. A storyteller beside the fire controls pace and pause with her voice. A writer is absent: on the page, punctuation does the work of the voice. This lesson looks at what changed when literature moved from the mouth to the page, and then at the marks that make written literature readable.

Definition

written literature: literature composed in writing and fixed in a manuscript, book or screen, usually by a known author, and received mainly by reading.
manuscript: a text written by hand; also an author's text before it is printed.
prose: writing in ordinary sentences and paragraphs (novels, short stories). poetry: writing in lines, shaped by rhythm and sound. drama: writing in dialogue and stage directions, meant to be performed.
punctuation: the marks (. , ; : ? ! ' " – ( ) …) used in writing to separate sentences and parts of sentences, show pauses and tone, and make meaning clear.

Part 1: From the voice to the page

Writing was invented about five thousand years ago in Mesopotamia (in present-day Iraq) and Egypt. Among the oldest written literature that survives are Sumerian poems about Gilgamesh, a king of the city of Uruk, copied onto clay tablets around four thousand years ago and later shaped into the Epic of Gilgamesh. For most of history, though, books were copied by hand, slowly, and few people could read them.

Around 1450, in Mainz in Germany, Johannes Gutenberg developed a way of printing with movable metal type. His printed Bible appeared in about 1455. Printing made books cheaper and more numerous, spread reading, fixed spelling and punctuation, and later made possible the long novel read silently by one person.

In Rwanda, Kinyarwanda was first written in the Latin alphabet by missionaries in the early twentieth century, and the Catholic newspaper Kinyamateka was founded in 1933. Scholars such as Abbé Alexis Kagame (1912–1981) wrote down and studied the old court poetry, and composed new poetry and prose in Kinyarwanda. Today Rwandan writers publish in Kinyarwanda, English and French, and oral and written literature live side by side.

A page of a Gutenberg Bible printed in Mainz in about 1455, now in the Bodleian Libraries, Oxford: two columns of Latin in heavy black type, with large letters painted in by hand. Look for the punctuation: there are only a few points, and no quotation marks at all. Many of the marks you use today were settled by later printers. Photo: The Bodleian Libraries, University of Oxford, CC BY 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons.

Oral and written literature compared

Feature	Oral literature	Written literature
Medium	The voice, with gesture and song	Letters on a page or screen
Author	Usually unknown; owned by the community	Usually one known author, who may hold copyright
The text	Changes with every performance	Fixed: every reader reads the same words
Audience	Present, in a group, responding	Absent, often reading alone and silently, perhaps centuries later
Length and complexity	Limited by memory; uses repetition and formulas	Can be very long and complex (a novel of 500 pages), with flashbacks and many characters
Revision	Shaped in performance	Drafted, revised and edited before publication
Preservation	Depends on memory; can be lost	Survives as long as copies survive
How tone is shown	Voice, pitch, pauses, facial expression	Word choice, punctuation, paragraphing, layout

Neither is "better". Writing gives permanence and room for complexity; the voice gives presence and participation. Many written works, from Achebe's novels full of Igbo proverbs to poems meant to be read aloud, deliberately borrow the techniques of oral literature.

Part 2: Language focus: punctuation

Mark	Main uses	Example
Full stop .	Ends a statement; marks some abbreviations	The Mole bolted out of the house.
Comma ,	Separates items in a list, clauses and phrases; follows an introductory phrase; marks off extra information	First with brooms, then with dusters
Semicolon ;	Joins two closely related main clauses; separates list items that already contain commas	then with dusters; then on ladders and steps and chairs
Colon :	Introduces a list, an explanation or a quotation, after a complete clause	He wanted one thing: the open air.
Question mark ?	Ends a direct question	"Why didn't you tell him?"
Exclamation mark !	Shows strong feeling, a command or a cry	"Bother!"
Apostrophe '	Shows possession (the Mole's home; the rabbits' road) or a missing letter (didn't)	It's (= it is) spring; the house lost its (no apostrophe) spirit.
Quotation marks " " or ' '	Enclose a speaker's exact words, quotations and titles of short works	"Hold up!" said an elderly rabbit.
Hyphen -	Joins words into one compound	spring-cleaning, well-known writer
Dash –	Marks a sharp break, an interruption or an added comment	"Why didn't you tell him–"
Brackets ( )	Enclose extra information	Alexis Kagame (1912–1981)
Ellipsis …	Shows words left out, or speech trailing off	"Kera habayeho…"

Why Grahame used semicolons

His sentence lists the stages of the Mole's work, and each stage already contains commas ("with a brush and a pail of whitewash"). Commas alone would blur the stages together. The semicolons mark the big steps, the commas the small ones, and the long, piling sentence makes us feel how long and tiring the cleaning was. Punctuation is not only correct or incorrect: it shapes rhythm and meaning.

Punctuating dialogue

Fiction lives on dialogue, so learn its rules from Grahame's next page:

"Hold up!" said an elderly rabbit at the gap. "Sixpence for the privilege of passing by the private road!"

The spoken words go inside quotation marks, with their own punctuation (! ? , .) inside the closing mark.
If the speech is a statement followed by the reporting clause, end it with a comma, not a full stop: "This is fine," he said.
The reporting clause ("said an elderly rabbit") begins with a small letter, because the sentence goes on.
Start a new paragraph each time the speaker changes.
British books often use single marks ('Hold up!'); American books use double ("Hold up!"). Either is correct; be consistent.

Punctuation changes meaning

Let's eat, Grandma! (an invitation) and Let's eat Grandma! (a horror story).
The teacher said the student is lazy. (the teacher is speaking) and The teacher, said the student, is lazy. (the student is speaking).
Mugisha's friends' books (the books belong to several friends of Mugisha) and Mugisha's friend's books (one friend).

Worked example: punctuate the dialogue

Unpunctuated: where are you going asked Keza to the library said Ishimwe I want to borrow Aesops fables can I come too

Find the speakers and their exact words: Keza says "where are you going"; Ishimwe says "to the library … fables"; someone, probably Keza, says "can I come too".
Put the spoken words in quotation marks and give each its end mark inside: a question needs "?", and Ishimwe's first statement is followed by a reporting clause, so it ends with a comma.
Add the apostrophe of possession: the fables belong to Aesop, so Aesop's.
Start a new paragraph for each new speaker, and capitalise the first word of each piece of speech.

Result:

"Where are you going?" asked Keza.
"To the library," said Ishimwe. "I want to borrow Aesop's fables."
"Can I come too?"

Tip

Read it aloud. Where your voice drops and stops, you probably need a full stop; where it pauses briefly, a comma; where it stops but the next idea follows tightly, a semicolon. Then check the rule: a semicolon and a colon both need a complete clause before them.

Warning

The comma splice: two full sentences joined only by a comma. Not The Mole was tired, he went outside. Write The Mole was tired; he went outside. or The Mole was tired, so he went outside.
its (belonging to it) has no apostrophe; it's always means "it is" or "it has".
Don't use an apostrophe for a plain plural: two books, not two book's.
One exclamation mark is enough. "Help!!!" belongs in a text message, not an essay.

"How to use a semicolon" by Emma Bryce, a three-minute TED-Ed animation. Watch for its two uses of the semicolon, joining related clauses and separating list items that contain commas, and find both in Grahame's sentence above.

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Practice

Give four differences between oral and written literature.
Name the three main genres of written literature and one feature of each.
Why did printing change literature? Give two reasons.
Punctuate: the tortoise said slow but steady wins the race
Correct the errors: The hare was fast, he was also proud. Its the hares pride that lost the race. The animals cheered for the tortoise's!
Explain the difference in meaning: (a) The students who studied the fable passed. (b) The students, who studied the fable, passed.
Write six lines of dialogue between two students arguing about whether oral or written literature is more important. Punctuate it correctly, with a new paragraph for each speaker.

Show answersHide answers

Any four: voice vs letters on a page; unknown, communal author vs a known author; a changing text vs a fixed text; a present, responding audience vs an absent, silent reader; limited by memory vs able to be very long and complex; preserved in memory vs in copies; tone by voice vs by punctuation and word choice.
Prose: ordinary sentences and paragraphs. Poetry: lines shaped by rhythm and sound. Drama: dialogue and stage directions, written for performance.
For example: it made books cheaper and more numerous, so more people learned to read; it fixed texts, spelling and punctuation; it made long works such as novels possible for private reading.
The tortoise said, "Slow but steady wins the race." (or: 'Slow but steady wins the race.')
The hare was fast; he was also proud. (or: fast, but he was also proud.) It's the hare's pride that lost the race. The animals cheered for the tortoise!
(a) Only those students who studied the fable passed (a defining clause, no commas). (b) All the students passed, and all of them had studied the fable (extra information between commas).
Answers vary. Check quotation marks, end marks inside them, commas before reporting clauses, capitals and a new paragraph for each speaker.

Quick check

Why does Grahame put semicolons, not commas, between the stages of the Mole's cleaning?

Key points

Written literature is fixed on the page, usually by a known author, and read by an absent reader; writing and then printing (Gutenberg, about 1450) made long, complex works possible and preserved them.
Oral and written literature differ in medium, authorship, fixity, audience, length and preservation, but they borrow from each other.
On the page, punctuation replaces the voice: learn the uses of the comma, semicolon, colon, apostrophe, quotation marks and dash, and the rules for dialogue.

1Part 1: From the voice to the page

2Oral and written literature compared

3Part 2: Language focus: punctuation