Real Men Don't Need Exclamation Points!

Holiday season exhausts us!

"Well, Solipsist," you may reply, "you still have a couple of months before things get truly hectic."

Two months?!? What in heaven's name are you blithering about, you ignorant toadstool? (We get nasty under stress.) The holidays are upon us!

Scarcely do we recover from "International Talk Like a Pirate Day" (9/19) before "National Punctuation Day" rolls around! And not a moment too soon! Why, in just the first few lines of this post, we've already used six quotation marks, five exclamation points, four parentheses, two periods, two apostrophes, one question mark, and more commas--12--than you can shake a stick at!

(Digression: Where did that expression come from? Was there at one time an official or royal or national stick-shaker, whose job it was to shake sticks at things, and who at some point collapsed from exhaustion due to an excess of shakeworthy objects? EOD)

Yes, folks, September 24, is National Punctuation Day, "A celebration," according to the official website, "of the lowly comma, correctly used quotes, and other proper uses of periods, semicolons, and the ever-mysterious ellipsis."

Why didn't we come up with this?

Punctuation, in case you're wondering, includes any marks on a page that provide directions to a reader--aside from those marks we call letters and words, that is. Punctuation is also a bit of a hobgoblin to writing teachers and students alike. Every semester, students approach us and ask, for example, what the proper use of a comma is. The answer? Nobody knows. If anyone ever tells you he knows the proper way to use a comma, he's lying!

(Digression: Also, sometimes apostrophes like to pretend to be commas. Beware of impostors. EOD)

Also, one should strenuously avoid exclamation points.

Seriously!

Exclamation points are the first refuge of the lazy writer. Your words should carry the emotional burden of the sentence, not your punctuation. We're just sayin'.

While we seethe with envy towards Jeff Rubin, the founder of National Punctuation Day, we applaud his initiative. People don't pay enough attention to punctuation--don't consider its possibilities. For example, in that last sentence, we could have put a comma after 'punctuation,' but we felt that a dash--conferring greater emphasis on that which follows--was a better choice. (As it was in that last sentence, too; here, however, since we're essentially providing a footnote, parentheses are the way to go.)

Parentheses whisper; dashes scream.

Oh, and semicolons separate.

So, enjoy National Punctuation Day. Take a comma to lunch. Buy a question mark a dozen roses. And, if you're stuck for a way to celebrate, you can always turn to our good friend the ellipsis for a few ideas. . . .

But if you remember only one thing about punctuation, remember this: If you ever end up with an odd number of quotation marks, then something, somewhere, has gone horribly wrong.