The use of commas: evidences of writing heterogeneity

Abstract

In this article, we analyze comma usage, i.e the oscillation between conventional and non-conventional uses of this punctuation mark in a corpus that consists of 152 texts. The texts were written by students of the fifth grade in a public school in the countryside of São Paulo State. We hold that the motivations for non-conventional usage, identified as the absence/presence of comma confirm what Corrêa (2004) calls heterogeneous way of writing. Thus, by analysing comma usage, we investigate the possible relations between, oral and written statements. In general, the results showed that due to this relation we can find (i) excessive punctuation marks (non-conventional usage characterized by the presence of comma); and (ii) lack of punctuation marks (non-conventional usage by the absence of comma).