Understanding punctuation is an important part of the enjoyment of reading, and another facet of literacy. I mentioned in the discussion group about the question posed to me by my college advisor. I was asked if I could write and said yes. I could write, but that is not what they meant, can you write at college level, and that is certainly different than writing to Grand-ma. Reading is like this in that you may know how to read, but to be truely literate you have to understand the function of punctuation. Where would reading be with out the poetic pause of a comma, the dramatic exclamation, or the qestion not asked in words but indicated by a question mark? I think this may be a reason so many people do not enjoy reading.
Try reading something without using the punctuation. It is hard if you are fully literate but you can do it. Boring, so imagine a series of books as large as the "The Wheel of time" by Robert Jordan (1990 ) without the benifit of punctuation. Hell, I'd be asleep in the first few minutes. It would be like reading a few thousand pages of technical manual, and that may be exactly what people who do not like to read are seeing.
I mean really, what is there not to love about reading, huh?
My wife thinks people who do not read are lazy and this may be true. I just wonder why?
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