I stumbled across an interesting little anecdote that serves both as commentary on prevailing views on gender in society, or gendered views, and as a lesson in punctuation.
The following sentence, with word order intact, can have entirely opposite meanings depending on the punctuation used:
"A woman without her man is nothing"
One meaning is brought about with the help of two commas and a period: "A woman, without her man, is nothing." The opposite meaning is achieved by adding a colon, comma, and period: "A woman: without her, man is nothing."
The site on which I found this little punctuation lesson concluded with "Punctuation is everything," like the one-time slogan of the Globe and Mail, "Perspective is everything." It appears under the 'Fun' category of the website, so I don't know if the gender aspect was given much thought, or if so, which version the writer might identify with.
Anyway, while I wouldn't go so far as to say that punctuation is everything, I would say that it can be a crucial determiner of meaning. And as you can see, it can also tell us a bit about the writer, or to be more specific, the punctuator (Grammatical Aside: I can't seem to find a definitive answer on general semantic differences between -or and -er agentive endings, so I don't know which this word should have). Check out the original anecdote here.
