Kurt Vonnegut once gave this piece of creative writing advice: "First rule: Do not use semicolons... All they do is show you've been to college.”  

There's no question that punctuation elicits strong feelings. On today's Please Explain, linguist David Crystal teaches us how to correctly use punctuation, and gives us a history of why we punctuate the way we do. His latest book, Making a Point: The Persnickety Story of English Punctuation, completes his trilogy of books on the English language.

Do you have questions about punctuation? Write to us in a comment below, or let us know on Twitter or Facebook!