In the following passage about Queen Elizabeth I, you don’t need to pay much attention to the words: concentrate on the punctuation.

The “Darnley Portrait” of Elizabeth I of England

Elizabeth I’s reign from 1558 to 1603 is known as the Elizabethan era. The period is famous for the flourishing of English drama, led by playwrights such as William Shakespeare and Christopher Marlowe (who may have been one of Elizabeth’s double agents), and for the seafaring prowess of English adventurers such as Sir Francis Drake (who was a pirate as well as a global circumnavigator). Towards the end of Elizabeth’s reign, a series of economic and military problems weakened her popularity. Elizabeth is acknowledged as a charismatic performer and a dogged survivor in an era when government was ramshackle and limited, and when monarchs in neighboring countries faced internal problems that jeopardized their thrones. After the short reigns of Elizabeth’s half-siblings, her forty-four years on the throne provided welcome stability for the kingdom and helped forge a sense of national identity.

Here is the punctuation of the passage with the words removed:

__________________________________. ________________________________________, ___________ (____________________________________), ____________________________________ (________________). ________________, _______________________________________________. _________________________________________________________________________________, __________________________________________________________________. ________________________, __________________________________________________.

As you can see, the fairly basic information in this passage has a fairly basic punctuation structure. It simply uses periods, commas, and parentheses. It’s correct, but it’s not very sophisticated; it provides information rather than analysis or argument, and the closest it comes to complexity is when it tucks away some intriguing but uncoordinated details in parentheses. At college, the following punctuation patterns occur frequently both in reading and writing argumentative prose, which is typically more complex than either verbal speech or the writing you might have done at high school:

• ________; ________.
  • Elizabeth was baptized on 10 September, 1533; Archbishop Thomas Cranmer stood as one of her godparents (the semi-colon joining two related but complete sentences).
• ________; however, ________.
  • The English took the defeat of the Spanish armada as a symbol of God’s favor; however, this victory was not a turning point in the war (the semi-colon before a conjunctive adverb, e.g. however, moreover, therefore, thus, consequently, furthermore, unfortunately. Notice also the comma after the conjunctive adverb.).
• ________: ____, ____, and ____.
  • The period is famous for the flourishing of English drama, led by several well-known playwrights: William Shakespeare, Christopher Marlowe, and Francis Beaumont (a colon introducing a list).

As you write, it’s best to use a variety of these patterns. If you use the same pattern repeatedly, your writing can seem predictable. More importantly, if what you’re writing never calls for the complications signaled by the punctuation of a conjunctive adverb, the urgency of a semi-colon holding together two complete thoughts, or the elaboration of a list introduced by a colon, you might in fact be writing something that is predictable.