‘Mind your stops’ is a good rule in writing as well as in riding. So in public speaking, it is a great thing to know when to stop and where to stop. The third edition of a treatise on English Punctuation has been recently published, with all needful rules for writers, but none for speakers. The author furnishes the following example of the unintelligible, produced by the want of pauses in the right places:
Every lady in this land
Hath twenty nails upon each hand;
Five and twenty on hands and feet.
And this is true, without deceit.If the present points be removed, and others inserted, the true meaning of the passage will at once appear:
Every lady in this land
Hath twenty nails: upon each hand
Five; and twenty on hands and feet.
And this is true without deceit.
– Harper’s New Monthly Magazine, June 1855