A Teacher's Perspective

Teaching English in a court reporting school is a little like teaching students how to carve statues.  But instead of using marble and chisels, we start with blocks of words and bring out the underlying shape by using punctuation.  There are six major punctuation marks -- periods, question marks, commas, semicolons, colons, and dashes -- and a handful of minor ones for bringing out subtle detail.  When students have mastered these tools, they can make sense of what people say, even when at first hearing it may seem confusing.  For example, only a trained and skillful court reporter could prevent the following witness from possibly being thrown into jail for adultery and cruelty to animals:     

To surprise my wife my high school sweetheart my lover the mother of my children and my best friend on her birthday I bought her a grill and we barbecued the dog drooling over the thought of gnawing the bones when we had finished.

With the proper punctuation, he turns out not to be a cad at all, but a loving husband and thoughtful pet owner:

To surprise my wife -- my high school sweetheart, my lover, the mother of my children, and my best friend -- on her birthday, I bought her a grill and we barbecued, the dog drooling over the thought of gnawing the bones when we had finished.

English rules!

By Art Cochran, a teacher at Brown College of Court Reporting

More information on Brown College of Court Reporting can be found at www.bccr.edu or by calling (800)849-0703.