The Punctuation Complexity Treemap: Which Mark Is the Hardest to Learn?

I’ve done similar punctuation infographics in the past (check out The 15 Punctuation Marks, the 69 Rules for Using Punctuation, and the Periodic Table of Punctuation), but I wondered how the many rules of punctuation would look if broken down into a treemap. So here it is!

Wait…but’s what’s a “treemap”?

First thing’s first. If you’re unfamiliar with this cool type of chart, a treemap is a data visualization graphic that allows you break down parts of a whole in order to make comparisons in size and percentage. It’s kind of like a pie chart in that sense, but way more visually effective. (Check out my Pie Chart Decision Tree to see why pie charts are almost always a bad choice.)

What did I do to create the data for this punctuation chart? I counted up the many different ways you can use each punctuation mark, and determined that there are roughly 68 ways to use all fourteen punctuation marks (actually, there are other obscure rules beyond the 68, but the 68 I counted encompass pretty much all of the most common). Then, I determined how many rules each of the marks uses and divided that by 68. For example, the comma—by far the most complex punctuation mark—has fourteen different ways to use it. Fourteen divided by sixty-eight rules brings us to roughly 20%. If we were to memorize all the punctuation mark rules all at once, 20% of what we focused on would be entirely dedicated to commas!

I’m not really sure how practical or useful this diagram is, but it makes for a fun comparison of the different punctuation marks and how complex each is by the number of different things they do!