The Right Way. 3,125)650,000(208 625 0 25 00 00 00 ------ 25 000 25 000 Very simple, but let me “whisper,” if you really master and understand the mysteries of “long division,” you have crossed the Rubicon of education. There is no door in all human learning that need remain forever sealed to a persistent mind that has truly found its way clearly and understandingly through this first great stumbling block. Ask any old-fashioned school teacher to dispute that proposition. And, “whisper” again, there are men counting coupons who can do long division, to be sure, but who could not tell you why it is done as it is, if the price of stocks depended on it. Punctuation. Punctuation is a system of marks the purpose of which is to indicate to the eye the relation of words to one another in meaning, and so the relative importance of the component parts of a written composition. The marks of Punctuation, corresponding, for the most part, to pauses in spoken language, are the comma (,), the period (.), the note of interrogation (?), the note of exclamation (!), the colon (:), the semi-colon (;), the dash (--), parentheses ( ), brackets [ ], quotation marks (“ ”), and the hyphen (-). =Purpose of Punctuation.=--To make a written composition clear and intelligent, and to facilitate the task of reading. =Avoid All Unnecessary Remarks.=--In modern writings punctuation marks are less frequently used than they were among writers in the early part of the last century. A sentence consisting of a simple subject, a simple predicate, and a simple object, or the relation of whose parts is clearly intelligible without marks, should not be encumbered with any. Take, for instance, the following two sentences: “The attack was prepared with impenetrable secrecy.” “On the very morning of the massacre they were in the houses and at the tables of those whose deaths they were plotting.” =Comma.=--Three or more words of the same part of speech not connected by conjunctions should be separated from one another by commas. “He was strong, alert, active.” “New York City is grand, immense, beautiful.” Two words contrasted with one another are separated by a comma. “He is slow, but sure.” Words in a series of pairs should be separated by a comma. “Young and old, strong and weak, fair and dark, good and bad.” Explanatory and parenthetical words or phrases (such as “therefore,” “moreover,” “indeed,” “however,” “in fact,” “to some extent,” etc.), inserted into the body of a sentence are usually marked off by commas. A comma is inserted after the name of a person or thing addressed. “John, you were mistaken.” “My country, I am proud of thee.”