I think we have to keep at the forefront of our minds that teenagers don’t need perfect punctuation. 99% of teens are terrible at punctuation. AOs in fact, are probably skeptical when they see perfectly punctuated writing because it screams of AI.
As someone who has seen hundreds of student essays, I don’t let kids submit an essay with 100% perfect writing. Teens are not perfect. I think in my years doing this, maybe 3 students have written with flawless conventions of standard English. It just doesn’t happen, and even less so now when students have forgotten how to write.
An illustration: in my test prep work, kids barely know how to punctuate anything. The pandemic made that much worse. In fact, I’d say that maybe just over the past year, kids seem to be a little better with punctuation than they were say 2 or 3 years ago. One of the easiest ways I can help them is to discuss the classic Let’s eat Grandma example.
So what’s going on? Kids learn punctuation before 5th grade and are lucky if teachers mention it again. They forget. And with AI, why should teachers bother, quite frankly? They have so much on their plates and I am not criticizing them at all. But SAT and ACT STILL test on punctuation and grammar. Especially the ACT. It’s easy to argue that apart from taking standardized tests, they don’t need to remember how to punctuate. Texting is also a huge reason why punctuation is dying.
I’ll be interested to see if maybe colleges will pay closer attention to the subscores of SAT and ACT. Kids can’t use AI to take those tests. A perfect essay is going to be a red flag when the subscore reflects something well below perfection.