Punctuation you can hear

A practice companion to the manual

Phi writes exactly one mark: the period. Everything else English draws on the page, Phi says out loud: the question mark is a word, both quotation marks are words, the comma of address is a word, the capital letter of a name is a word. The doctrine is a single canon ruling (Punctuation) and one line of the quick reference; the pieces have their own manual homes (wa in ch12, the closers in ch20, kona in ch23, ne in the naming pamphlet) and this pamphlet assembles them into the thing they jointly are: a complete punctuation system made of words, with nothing silent in it but one small dot.

Two skills interleave throughout. The first is mechanical: hearing and saying the marks: reflexively fronting wa, closing every shola, letting verbs shut their own clauses. The second is the writer's restraint: leaving the page bare where an English-trained hand itches, and trusting the words to have already done the work.

By the end of this pamphlet, you will:

• Say every mark English writes: the question mark before its question, both quotation marks, the comma of address, the capital of a name
• Hear clause seams without a single comma: announcers ahead, verbs closing doors, closers clicking shut
• Put the exclamation's work where Phi puts it: on the word, not on the sentence
• Pass the dictation test: carry a message holding a question, a quotation, and a name through three mouths, letter-perfect
• Write Phi with one silent mark, and read period-only prose with every mark sounding

This pamphlet assumes the particle system (manual ch9) and the mindful sentence (ch10). It is a companion to the canon punctuation ruling and to ch10 §5, ch17, ch19, and ch21 §1.

Contents:

1. One silent mark
2. The question mark: wa
3. The quotation marks: shola … sholo
4. The comma of address, the capital of a name
5. The clause commas
6. The exclamation, worded
7. The dictation test
8. Common errors
9. Exercises
10. Appendix: quick reference

A Phi sentence can cross a garden, a bad telephone line, or a century, and nothing falls off, because nothing was silent.