Re: The Usual Response...
It's true that adding in genuinely random punctuation will make it much harder to remember but adding in a punctuation character that is randomly selected once at the beginning of time does add a bit of value. It's worth remembering that if we suggest four random words, the average critter in the street will think "well two or three will be good enough" and they won't necessarily be well chosen words at that ("letmein" is three words but it's very far from uncrackable).
I always point out that any transformation ("o" -> "0") you can think of, those who crack passwords professionally have thought of it before you, so it's pointless.
One of the downsides of password manager generated random passwords ("45K7WaUfHxFyrIu6J6CPKM3Gs1jU1oB+UhMByAkn48A" (yes I do have a shell function to generate random noise passwords - don't you?)) is that they're a lot harder to type in than random word-style passwords ("petrifies-Reunion-primitive-putsch" (ditto)). And sometimes you do have to type 'em in.
Biting the hand that feeds IT
