Bacon’s “Envy”: An Evaluation of Punctuation

Punctuation plays a pivotal role in enhancing comprehensibility of a text. It not only abolishes ambiguity from the text but also adorns the individual style of the author. This paper analyses Bacon’s essay “Envy” evaluating the aberrant use of punctuation to understand its impact on holistic comprehension of the essay. Bacon has deviated in some punctuation marks in different situations. Most deviations occur in the use of the comma and the semicolon. The least deviations occur in the use of the period. Two explanations may be inferred from the analysis: First, what seems to be deviant in this regard was normal in his time; second, he deviates on purpose to make the long, complex sentence clear and easy for the reader.