It was well into the seventeenth century before punctuation was used on a regular basis. Writers like Chaucer didn’t use it all, and Shakespeare’s markers tended to be more concerned with stage directions. After Ben Johnson published his English Grammar in 1640, syntactic punctuation was used more frequently.
However, modern writers, such as Faulkner, E E Cummings, Samuel Becket, and Frank McCourt, have shown their disdain for such convention. Gertrude Stein went as far as to say, “punctuation is only necessary for the feeble-minded.”
Having written this to justify my own recent literary efforts, here is a sample paragraph, of what I call poetic prose.
Being wet
Confused
And with nowhere else to go
I joined her
Under the big green umbrella
And we walked in silence
As the rain
Unabated
Sometimes carried
By a sudden gust of wind
Would sting our faces
And Jenny San would struggle
To keep hold of the umbrella
That seemed determined
To carry us
Mary Poppin’s style
Over the roof-tops of Singapore
This is from a 9,000 words short story, “The Girl with the Green Umbrella,”