one potato, two potato

One commenter at the Guardian arts blog presents the pragmatist’s case for punctuation:

Punctuation is an arbitrary system of marks that writers of a given language agree to use, primarily to avoid ambiguity and increase readability. For example, “the potato’s boiling in the small pot” is an unambiguous phrase until you realise that the person who wrote it may think that “potato’s” is a plural.

In poetry (and sometimes prose), the absence of punctuation (no initial caps, full stops, etc.) is used to create ambiguity and involve the reader. outsideofthesespecificinstanceswhereauthorsdontusepunctuationsoas
toachieveaspecificeffectitsabsenceormis’useisapainintheneck

Brilliant!