Nobody. Understands. Punctuation.
If you have an hour and this topic really interests you, I'd recommend David Foster Wallace's essay "Authority and American Usage" - <a href="http://wilson.med.harvard.edu/nb204/AuthorityAndAmericanUsage.pdf" rel="nofollow">http://wilson.med.harvard.edu/nb204/AuthorityAndAmericanUsag...</a>.<p>He covers (very fairly and entertainingly, IMO) the major divide between linguistic prescriptivists and descriptivists, and why both camps have a point.