Punctuation serves as a system of visual markers that contradict previously generated false grammatical expectations. Word order conditions define the redundant or critical aspect of punctuation cues to visual display. Parsing (grouping) sentences into meaningful phrases and clauses aids language comprehension, and children who have reading problems have often been shown to lack parsing skills. There is also evidence to suggest that visually marking subject, predicate, and phrase boundaries results in an improvement in children's reading comprehension. If text segmentation or end of line punctuation is related to an improvement in developing children's reading comprehension, it might be worthwhile to redesign some texts so that (1) modified terminal punctuation is used for beginning low ability readers, (2) punctuation is used to determine the boundaries between chunks of text, (3) printed intonation cues in texts are eliminated, (4) chunked text due to lack of space is not broken at right margin, and (5) line breaks are made between phrases or toward the end of the sentence. New technologies, specifically microcomputers and word processing software, can help children to become more cognizant of these language patterns that affect comprehension. (HOD)