Bret Devereaux

So I was watching a short video talking about people being confused about punctuation and can we please stop it with the notion that things which are contingent or arbitrary must also be purposeless or meaningless? Yes, the way we use punctuation is entirely arbitrary...

...but so is the side of the road we drive on. That doesn't make either thing purposeless. Drive on the wrong side of the road because it is arbitrary, and the meaning and function of the arbitrary rule will hit you like a mack truck. Possibly *as* a mack truck.

(I suppose I should clarify that the argument of the video in question was that the rules of punctuation, like all of the rules of grammar are fundamentally arbitrary (yes), and therefore 'boring' (maybe) and so may be safely jettisoned for a more expressive, free-form use (no))

So yes, punctuation is an arbitrary system, full of entirely arbitrary 'rules' that everyone is taught, essentially by compulsion. But punctuation's purpose is to clarify meaning in a sentence. It can only fulfill that purpose if we all have the same ruleset for it in our heads.

So the fact that the process of determining English punctuation was arbitrary has no bearing on the value of firm 'rules' concerning punctuation. The fact that we are all taught the *same* arbitrary set of rules (for a given language) is what gives those arbitrary rules value.

This is not to say that language doesn't evolve; of course it does. Abandon the shared rules for language and its ability to communicate meaning is diminished. We collectively negotiate new rules all the time, but new-comers must be initiated into it as it exists. Thus, rules.

Which is why, in language, as in so many things, one must learn the rules in order to know when to break the rules. The skilled writer or speaker transforms language not by standing outside of the rules and ignoring them, but by standing within them with mastery of them.

And that applies to socially constructed *everything* (historically and in the present) more broadly. Just because someone is arbitrary, or socially constructed doesn't mean it isn't real and doesn't necessarily mean that it is purposeless or malignant.