Children's Use of Punctuation Marks: The Case of Quoted Speech

Our knowledge of young children's ideas about punctuation marks is very limited. We know (Ferreiro & Teberosky, 1982) that children's first conceptual distinction is expressed in terms such as “It's not a letter; it's something else”; they are “sticks” or “dots” that “go with the letters.” The first step is probably the graphic differentiation between punctuation marks and closely related graphic forms (e.g., letters or numbers), followed by the use of generic terms (e.g., marks) and/or particular names, but the terms used give little hint about the function. In fact, whereas letters are there “to say something,” punctuation marks are silent marks. ¹