The writer who neglects punctuation, or mispunctuates, is liable to be misunderstood for the want of merely a comma, it often occurs that an axiom appears a paradox, or that a sarcasm is converted into a sermonoid. – Edgar Allan Poe

There is no element in which language resembles music more than in the punctuation marks…. Exclamation points are like silent cymbal clashes, question marks like musical upbeats, colons dominant seventh chords… – Theodor W. Adorno (1903–1969), “Punctuation Marks,” Notes to Literature, V

The rules of punctuation seem arbitrary. How can they not, when an apostrophe looks like nothing in this world so much as a comma that can’t keep its feet on the ground? Or when, by simply placing next to that wafting comma its twin, one creates (of all things) a quotation mark? – Richard Lederer and John Shore, Comma Sense: A Fun-damental Guide to Punctuation