In the excellent book Eats, Shoots & Leaves, Lynne Truss discusses how over centuries, punctuation was added to the written word, as the intended audience of writing transitioned to the silent reader.

I heartily recommend her book to you, especially the chapter “That'll Do, Comma”. Consider this statement from that chapter, where she discusses this sentence fragment: “they tell us to slow down, notice this, take a detour, and stop”. Try to relate her comments about the written word to how you would read that sentence out loud: “This was a decelerating sentence. The commas were incrementally applying the brakes. To omit the comma after “detour” would have the sentence suddenly coasting at speed again instead of slowing to the final halt.”

Today the written word is heavily wrapped and groups of words are carefully packaged. You divide your words into chapters, paragraphs, sentences and clauses. You intersperse punctuation, to create meaningful groupings of words. You bold some words, italicize others. You put quotation marks around dialogue to differentiate it from the surrounding unspoken words. You do all this for your reader's eye.

Here's the dilemma: even though you can plainly see all the wrapping and packaging, none of these visual clues are available to your listener when you narrate. The listener is counting on you to replace all the wrapping and packaging with how you use your voice.

The next few sections will focus on converting these visual clues into audible clues. I will also talk about visual clues that you don't need to convert, either because they are there to create the visual equivalent of what is being spoken, or they are only there because English grammar rules require them.