A neat way to check your punctuation

Does the punctuation you use actually reflect the cadence of your writing?

This article is not about Grammarly or any other such spelling and grammar check.

This applies to any reasonably well written article where all the low hanging fruit of grammar have been plucked. Here, I will help you ensure that your article is actually read the way you intended.

Photo by Lee Pigott on Unsplash

Cadence

Cadence in writing is the beat of the writing.

Think of it like this — if a sentence of yours were used as a dialog in a movie, its cadence would help guide the performer on delivery.

As the author, you must give readers enough clues about how a sentence is to be read.

Cadence through Punctuation

When we write a sentence out, we actually imagine it with a whole slew of non-verbal cues about how the sentence should be read and delivered.

Yet, our punctuation does not always match our imagined non-verbal cues. Most of us make do with knowing only the bare minimum about punctuation for cadence.

We know the period (.) indicating finality. Commas indicate pause. We may even use the hyphen to inject an aside into the sentence or a…