Notes

1. “Good” writers is in reference to nonfiction by writers of recognized stature, whose work can be found in college readers. If fiction were included, the evidence would be only more evident. For more on this topic, see my Rethinking Punctuation.
2. Functional marks are those marks regularly and typically used to mark syntactic functions. I neglect parentheses, perhaps too arbitrarily, but unlike the other marks, parentheses are limited to pairs, giving them a unique and typically non-rhetorical function, suggesting that the primary use of parentheses is for “non-text” information.
3. For plentiful and convincing diachronic evidence for the claim that the basic unit in prose is the independent clause and that the sentence is simply one way to mark this clause, the reader should see Levinson’s dissertation (1985) and derived article (1989).
4. Subordinate conjunctions are not used to join independent clauses; they form “dependent” elements (phrases or clauses), elements which function as the attachments in patterns I, II, and III—and are punctuated accordingly.
5. Similarly, conjunctive adverbs are simply dependent
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   words and phrasal words (“on the other hand”) that function as the same kinds of attachments: “However, they played the next day” (pattern I). “They played the next day, however” (pattern II). “They played, however, the next day” (pattern III).