overpunctuation

Noun

overpunctuation (uncountable)

1. Excessive punctuation.
   • There is no need of the commas after vindictive and the four words subsequent; and so many needless points serve rather to confuse. Overpunctuation is a very common fault in our American books; the rules of Mandeville, Goold Brown, and Mulligan, as well as of Wilson’s Punctuation, do not tend to...1861, Scriba, “Punctuation.—Number IV.”, in The Illinois Teacher: Devoted to Education, Science, and Free Schools, volume VII, Peoria, Ill.: N. C. Nason, page 389
   • Under those circumstances, I felt obliged to use every device I could imagine to assist them in reading their lines, and sprinkled punctuation amid my prose like a glutton sugaring strawberries. It helped, and I tend to overpunctuate to this day. I practice overpunctuation, although I do not defend...1984, Stephen White, The Written Word, and Associated Digressions Concerned with the Writer as Craftsman, Harper & Row, →ISBN, pages 73 and 93