Would you agree with me that

punctuation describes when and how you pause for breath, and thus how you would modulate your voice (since your voice sounds different, when it begins speaking after a pause, than it does in the middle of an unpunctuated phrase).


?

It's there to separate clauses. We pause and change inflection to reflect that, I think.

Sort of, except there are rules for the placement of most punctuation. The effect is that you can, to a certain extent, modulate the reader's breathing or at least keep pace with it.
However, a lot of punctuation such as closely spaced commas and semicolons have little or no effect on a reader's breathing, eg: the commas in the following phrase:

since your voice sounds different, when it begins speaking after a pause, than it does in the middle of an unpunctuated phrase).



- NaomiM


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as daffy says, it's the modulation of the reader's voice which you are controlling, not the breathing - if you find you are gasping for breath when reading overlong sentences then you know it needs more punctuation. At which point it's best to refer to the rules of punctuation placement to see where to put some in.

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....you can't, just place it, anywhere.

Don't you think those commas affect your breathing? I think they do. You pause when you reach them, don't you?
If you say the sentence aloud with no commas, wouldn't you find yourself with less breath left at the end of the sentence, than if you had included commas?

I agree it's there to separate clauses, but I wanted to speak about what it does to the reader's experience of the text, rather than the grammar of it.

I think punctuation does both. It has a logical, sense-making function, and of course that often coincides with when you'd breathe if you were reading it, but not always. My grammar and punctuation are usually pretty reliable, but when I'm tussling with a copy-editor over where commas would go, it's almost always because I've punctuated with an ear to how I'd read it aloud:

"I went cheerfully downstairs, but as I had expected he was looking very solemn."

whereas they're following the rules of 'correct' punctuation which reflects the grammatical structure of clauses and so on:

"I went cheerfully downstairs but, as I had expected, he was looking very solemn."

But 'correct' grammar rules are all about sense, and creative writing is expressive, which is related but different.

Emma

I'm sure I read somewhere (possibly in Eats, shoots and Leaves by Lynn Truss?)that punctuation was used by the Greeks in play scripts, to indicate to the actors where to pause, so yes, up to a point, it is there to describe where to pause for breath.

I'd say not all punctuation fulfills that function (e.g. the apostrophe), although much of it does. It certainly adds an additional layer of meaning to the words. I can't imagine what we'd do without it.

(Now should that be a full stop before the last sentence or semi or even full colon? It's not always easy, this punctuation thing.)

Kim

As far as comma placement is concerned, at least 50% of the time you're not actually pausing for breath, though, are you? - you'd either have to be reading very slowly, or find yourself hyperventilating if you did.
As said before, the commas mainly change the modulation of the reading voice (either in one's head, or out loud), and, as Emma points out, there is room for their removal if it disrupts the flow of the sentence (assuming you can get it past the copy editor).


- NaomiM

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We learn all about subordinate clauses last night, which is where the last comma of a sentence often comes in.



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[learn, duh.
Apologies for the typos. I do type it but the keyboard is getting old and not all the letters appear first time.

Sort of. It tells us where to pause and how to modulate one's voice to suggest a pause or switch of thought, which differs from telling us where to pause for breath.

In Emma's 'cheerfully downstairs' example, few people would need an in breath within the sentence as it can be read in one breath, but the subordinate clause in the second example directs the reader how to interpret the sentence.

And of course sometimes commas are crucial for clarity.