Costruzione del testo e punteggiatura tra norma, uso e didattica negli elaborati del corpus Tiscrivo

The article presents the study TIscrivo (Today Written Composition, between Spoken Language and Computer Mediated Communication. Theoretical aspects, diagnosis and teaching methods, Swiss National Science Foundation funding Dore 13DPD3_136603), based on the largest corpus of texts written at school ever collected in Canton Ticino. Section 1 describes the context and the project's main goals. We will then outline some first results from corpus analysis, in particular about the use of punctuation in learners' writing, focusing firstly on primary school (section 2) and then on junior high school (section 3). Afterwards, the article investigates some uses and constructions difficult to teach and to learn properly, and examines them in a sample of schoolbooks (section 4). Finally, specific attention is given to some "stylistic uses" of punctuation (section 5), i.e. to the advanced and conscious insertion of expressive punctuation marks conflicting with the standard rules. We will argue that when this kind of punctuation is introduced in young students' texts, usually it has to be interpreted not as a stylistic, voluntary choice, but as the outcome of a still unsure management of the system.