Summary Of The Sylish Semicolon By Angela Petit

To students and scholars alike the world of grammar is a territory few have an interest in exploring. While for Angela Petit, the scriber of “The Stylish Semicolon: Teaching Punctuation as Rhetorical Choice”, finds that perhaps it’s not the subject matter itself but the way in which we are taught to perceive it. She illustrates her case by saying, “the problem with grammar is not the subject itself, but the "traditional manner" in which the topic has been taught-through the rigid rules and formats” (Petit 66). Petit establishes that that way to stop students’ eyes from glazing over whenever a comma splice is mentioned is to focus on style rather than the strict rulebook of grammar we are so often presented. More specifically, the teaching

Ethos and Pathos don’t exist in a vacuum and the catalyst for them is the facts and figures provided by Petit and her contemporaries. The evidence isn’t always just to prove her points, but also her perspective. She uses the previously stated quote by Featheringill to exemplify the general populace's lack of interest in grammar. She then goes on to use Gregory Shafer’s writings, “which rejects "discrete rules of competence ... prescribed rules and formats" and "monolithic ideas of writing or correctness" in writing programs (Petit 66). This sheds light on how even authors and scholars have a hard time with the way grammar is framed and packaged. Lastly, Devan Cook introduces her main argument topic and Petit uses his perspective to set up her view on teaching grammar in a different format. Petit is not alone in this essay, and at times her use of quotes and the attribution of them makes it seem as though there is more than one writer. The evidence of this piece is the central component, the glue that makes it possible for all the other literary devices to

And in Angel Petit’s thinkpiece “The Stylish Semicolon”, she goes through the tribulations of punctuation and grammar and the ways we can improve. Not only with the subject itself but how it is looked at as a whole. Through the literary devices of pathos, ethos, and supporting evidence; Petit is able to weave herself through the different issues of this often unthought of issue. With the semicolon being used as the central example and symbol for style rhetorical choice, readers are lead through the logical and emotional journey necessary for an argumentative piece. Petit achieves this with ease, and asks us to see grammar and punctuation as more than a droning lesson in a textbook. Petit concludes with, “Only when we, as teachers, present grammar and punctuation as matters of style and rhetorical choice will students truly understand just how powerful words are, even when these words are the dots, dashes, and curves that make up punctuation” (Petit