1. Investigating how language works: punctuation for meaning
Y9 Language Detectives
Investigating how language works: punctuation for meaning

2. Punctuation for meaning
Let’s eat grandpa
A woman without her man is nothing
It’s all over my friend
colon :
comma ,
semi-colon ;
full stop .
question mark ?
ellipsis
...
exclamation mark !
brackets
( )
dash -
inverted commas
“ “
Pairs or whole class: How many different ways are there of punctuating the sentence examples? Experiment with different punctuation choices, noting changes to meaning each time.
A key learning point in this lesson is to underline the idea that punctuation is a creative tool to help shape meaning in writing, not just about getting full stops in the right place.

3. Punctuation for meaning: how should you say these lines from poems about the First World War?
Gas! Gas! Quick boys!
And thud! flump! thud! down the steep steps came thumping And splashing in the flood, deluging muck — The sentry's body.
Stress, too, that punctuation is a guide to how sentences should be read and spoken aloud.
In pairs or small groups: practise reading these lines aloud, using the punctuation to guide their voices.
Whole class: Hear a few versions and briefly discuss how the punctuation suggests tone and rhythm as well as meaning e.g. in the second example, how marking each word with an exclamation mark emphasises the force and awkwardness with which the sentry’s body hits each step and increases the horror of the event. You could show how the punctuation draws attention to the choice of successive and repeated monosyllabic words with heavy vowel and consonant sounds – so punctuation working together with word choices.

4. How can we use punctuation to shape meaning in our writing?
Punctuation is used to mark off words, phrases and clauses in a sentence, to give them emphasis and meaning:
In all my dreams, before my helpless sight, he plunges at me, guttering, choking, drowning.
Experiment with arranging the grammatical units in this sentence in a different order. How does this alter emphasis and meaning? E.g.
Guttering, choking, he plunges at me, in all my dreams, drowning, before my helpless sight.
Whole class:
Introduce learning question, information and examples. Don’t get bogged down in explanations of terms or rules: stress that punctuation gives writers choices of emphasis and meaning. The examples are from Owen’s Dulce et Decorum Est, which students will look at in detail during the lesson.
It’s genuinely difficult to talk about effects of punctuation but try to avoid misleading things such as “a comma shows where you take a breath” or “a full stop is a longer pause” – students will probably have picked up these kind of explanations but they are very confusing. Try to show that punctuation demarcates the grammatical units in a sentence – on the slide, the main clause with a finite verb is shown in green; prepositional phrases are shown in red, individual words (in this case, non-finite verbs) are shown in blue.
Individuals/pairs: Try one or two different arrangements of the grammatical units, trying each time to suggest how emphasis and meaning (including the rhythm of the sentence) is slightly altered. Examples:
Choking, drowning, he plunges at me in all my dreams.
Before my helpless sight, he plunges at me, choking, drowning.
Compare their versions with the original – which one most emphasises the horror of the gas attack?

5. How can we use punctuation to shape meaning in our writing?
Punctuation is used to mark off words, phrases and clauses in a sentence, to give them emphasis and meaning and to give the reader clues about how to read the text aloud:
Bent double, like old beggars under sacks,  Knock-kneed, coughing like hags, we cursed through sludge,  Till on the haunting flares we turned our backs  And towards our distant rest began to trudge. 
Why is it hard to read this sentence quickly?
Count how many different grammatical units there are in this one sentence.
Which of these units:
Give vivid descriptions of what the the soldiers look like or how they move?
Slow down the pace to emphasise the soldiers’ weariness?
Whole class:
Ask students to read these lines as quickly as they can. Why is this hard to do?
Use the bullet points on the slide to discuss the creative effect of the punctuation in the first sentence of the poem (which extends over four lines): how it marks off vivid descriptions, how it slows down the pace, how it lists the misery.
NB There are 6 different grammatical units or ‘chunks’ in the one sentence. Students often confuse a line of poetry with a sentence – show here how the phrases and clauses are built into one long sentence.
There are no exact answers to the questions about which phrases or clauses are effective in describing the soldiers’ state or slow down the reading pace – the questions are posed in such a way to ‘name’ possible effects (rather than just saying ‘how are the phrases and clauses effective’)
You will probably need to lead the discussion here – in subsequent slides, students are asked to make their own comments on effects of punctuation in Dulce et Decorum Est, so it will be useful to model those kind of comments for them here.

6. Dulce et Decorum Est by Wilfred Owen
Bent double, like old beggars under sacks,  Knock-kneed, coughing like hags, we cursed through sludge,  Till on the haunting flares we turned our backs  And towards our distant rest began to trudge. 
Men marched asleep. Many had lost their boots  But limped on, blood-shod. All went lame; all blind; Drunk with fatigue; deaf even to the hoots Of tired, outstripped Five-Nines that dropped behind.
Use the next 4 slides to read the whole poem aloud with the class. The archive photographs are used to provide context.
You can ask students to read the poem aloud but at their own pace, i.e. not trying to read all together. Stress that they are using punctuation to guide their voice. This will create some ‘echoes’ and overlaps in class which doesn’t matter at all.

7. Gas! Gas! Quick, boys! –  An ecstasy of fumbling,  Fitting the clumsy helmets just in time;  But someone still was yelling out and stumbling,  And flound'ring like a man in fire or lime . . . 
Dim, through the misty panes and thick green light,  As under a green sea, I saw him drowning.  In all my dreams, before my helpless sight,  He plunges at me, guttering, choking, drowning.  

8. If in some smothering dreams you too could pace  Behind the wagon that we flung him in,  And watch the white eyes writhing in his face,  His hanging face, like a devil's sick of sin; 
If you could hear, at every jolt, the blood  Come gargling from the froth-corrupted lungs,  Obscene as cancer, bitter as the cud Of vile, incurable sores on innocent tongues, 

9. My friend, you would not tell with such high zest  To children ardent for some desperate glory,  The old Lie: Dulce et Decorum est  Pro patria mori.
Whole class: Briefly clarify ‘story’ of poem e.g. By asking pairs to retell the poem as a story, in 10 seconds. Clarify the ‘moral’ or message of the poem, as summed up in final lines, stressing what the ‘old Lie’ is.
Explain that in next 2 slides you are going to look more closely at the link between punctuation and meaning.

10. Punctuation for meaning in Dulce et Decorum Est
Single words and short sentence with exclamation marks sounds as though someone is shouting; emphasises sudden action and sense of panic.
Dash emphasises shock of the attack – a pause before they realize what’s happening and reach for gas masks.
What is the ellipsis for? Is it too awful to describe? Is it suggesting that the victim is disappearing from sight in the gas?
Gas! Gas! Quick, boys! –  An ecstasy of fumbling, 
Fitting the clumsy helmets just in time; 
But someone still was yelling out and stumbling, 
And flound'ring like a man in fire or lime . . . 
How many different punctuation marks does Owen use here?
Can you name them all?
How does the punctuation emphasise the meaning and sound of the lines?
Slide is animated by clicking
Show this part of the poem and ask students to read aloud. (You might want to recap where in whole poem this part comes i.e. after slow build-up describing soldiers’ trudge back to base – this part suddenly quickens the pace and tone)
Individuals to pairs: Use the first two bullet point questions to check students’ knowledge – compare answers in pairs, then with another pair and whole class if any disagreement/confusion.
Whole class: show third bullet point and together share responses.
Show annotations – is this similar to the ideas they’ve just shared? Stress that there isn’t one ‘right’ answer to question of how punctuation emphasises meaning – but you are modelling how students can talk about punctuation effects – in this case in Owen’s poem, but applicable to fiction and non-fiction texts too.
CONSOLIDATE:
Be guided by class attention but this might be a good place to end. You can ask students to write out the lines and then to follow with a short written analysis of how punctuation emphasises meaning, using the annotations on the slide to help their own explanations.
EXTEND:
Use next slide too which shows final section of poem – which is all one sentence – and similar annotations about meaning. Again, you can ask students to explain, verbally or in writing, how Owen uses punctuation to emphasise meaning.
ALSO POSSIBLE – ask students to rewrite the lines as continuous prose, thinking carefully about how they can use a range of punctuation to emphasise meaning.

11. Punctuation for meaning in Dulce et Decorum Est
The long sentence ‘piles up’ the horror of the gas attack. Commas demarcate the hideous details and make us dwell on them. ‘If’ clauses, demarcated with semi-colons, build up the argument that war is obscene, not glorious.
Why is there a capital letter here ? Is it to show the enormity of the lie? The colon introduces the Latin quotation but also makes a very close connection between two ideas – that the sentiment “It is a sweet and fitting thing to die for one’s country” is a huge and shocking lie.
If in some smothering dreams you too could pace 
Behind the wagon that we flung him in, 
And watch the white eyes writhing in his face, 
His hanging face, like a devil's sick of sin; 
If you could hear, at every jolt, the blood 
Come gargling from the froth-corrupted lungs, 
Obscene as cancer, bitter as the cud
Of vile, incurable sores on innocent tongues, 
My friend, you would not tell with such high zest 
To children ardent for some desperate glory, 
The old Lie: Dulce et Decorum est 
Pro patria mori.
The final section of the poem consists of one long sentence.
True/False/Not sure
EXTENSION
Slide is animated.
Pairs: Ask them to decide whether or not the final part of the poem is in fact one sentence. Without getting bogged down, if students have said ‘not sure’, find out what their confusion is. You can point out the one finite verb string in the sentence: ‘you would not tell’, and the subordinate clauses starting with the subordinate conjunction ‘if’: ‘if you could pace.... if you could hear....
You could ask students to count how many commas are used here and to note that they are sometimes used to demarcate single words (adjectives in the noun phrase: vile, incurable sores on innocent tongues); to demarcate phrases e.g. the similes ‘like a devil’s sick of sin’ or ‘obscene as cancer’ and clauses e.g. the ‘if’ subclauses.
Before showing annotations in red, you can ask students why they think Owen chose to write the whole of the last part of the poem as one long sentence. The annotations are one person’s ideas – ask if students can say any more about how punctuation emphasises meaning.
NB Some students might be confused that each line starts with a capital letter – just explain that this is a convention of poetry and does not mean that each line of a poem is actually a sentence – as this example shows!