TPS News

Corrected sentence:
“Then comes a no-nonsense chairman of the board-making company, hiring and firing of lathe operators a near certainty in the not-too-distant future.”

Understanding this sentence is totally dependent upon punctuation. Without it, the sentence seems to refer to a “chairman of the board.” Such is the power of clichés and familiar phrases to lead readers astray. In fact, placing a hyphen between “board” and “making” changes the character of the sentence, with it suddenly containing a specific reference to a lumber company. Placing a comma after “company” creates a dependent sentence fragment with an assumed verb (being). The other missing punctuation marks are hyphenated compound modifiers “no-nonsense” and “not-too-distant.” This sentence shows how powerfully punctuation can influence reading.
要了解這個句子一定要仰賴標點符號。沒有標點，句子主語似乎是「chairman of the board」（董事長）－ 套語和熟悉的詞彙就是有這種讓人誤解的力量。但在「board」和「making」中間加上連字號後，句子的主語就突然變成某家木材公司。在「company」後面加上逗點，就形成帶有假定動詞 (being) 的附屬子句；「no-nonsense」和「not-too-distant」這兩個複合修飾詞也應該加上連字號。這個句子顯示標點符號對閱讀理解的影響有多大。