the importance of punctuation

Don’t think that punctuation is important?

Then take a look at this sentence:

A woman without her man is nothing

Now see how meaning changes completely when we add punctuation.

'A woman, without her man, is nothing.'

'A woman: without her, man is nothing.'

The most common punctuation is:

. = full stop/period

This is a comma, isn’t it? = comma

It’s an apostrophe = apostrophe

“These are quotation marks”= quotation marks

; = semi-colon

: = colon

(These are brackets) = brackets

- = hyphen

? = question mark

! = exclamation mark