My co-blogger, Emily, has alerted me to the following story:

An English lecturer wrote the words:

A woman without her man is nothing

on the whiteboard and asked her students to punctuate it correctly.

All the males in the class wrote:

A woman, without her man, is nothing.

All the females in the class wrote:

A woman: without her, man is nothing.

The choice  between a comma and a colon makes a huge difference in meaning.

Punctuation is powerful.