Playful punctuation in primary children’s narrative writing

Abstract

ABSTRACT Framed within the fields of applied linguistics and language play, the writing of three attainment groups of 9–11-year-old children was used to investigate their use of ludic (playful) punctuation in the composition of an imaginative narrative. The scripts were from a larger repeat-design study of writing development that addressed a range of linguistic features. It became apparent that the scripts contained a range of language play features, including the use of ludic punctuation, and these were then systematically studied. A total of 71 stories were analysed to identify and categorise the playful punctuation that the children used in this writing task. A range of ludic punctuation was found, most notably in the use of quotation marks, exclamation marks and question marks. In contrast, the asterisk, interrobang, underlining, brackets and dash were used infrequently. There were clear differences between the attainment groups in the content and range of these uses. The findings indicate that 10–11 year-old children find that narrative writing offers a range of opportunities for creative and playful uses of punctuation, even though they were not prompted to do this. The findings also suggest that such uses – like language play as a whole – warrant further investigation.