A panda walks into a cafe. He orders a sandwich, eats it, then draws a gun and fires two shots in the air.
"Why?" asks the confused waiter, as the panda makes towards the exit. The panda produces a badly punctuated wildlife manual and tosses it over his shoulder.
"I'm a panda," he says, at the door. "Look it up."
The waiter turns to the revenant entry and, sure enough, finds an explanation.
It's hard to convince kids that spelling and punctuation matter, especially when every browser has a spell-check plugin. We can talk about homonyms all we want, but when it comes to punctuation, the best way to make anyone give a hoot, are concrete examples."Panda. Large black-and-white bear-like mammal, native to China. Eats, shoots and leaves."
Below are some great, funny concrete examples of how punctuation can change the meaning of a sentence. Sadly, some of the best ones were not school appropriate, but I still feel confident that this list and accompanying handout will get a few chuckles.
