David Rodeback's BlogLocal Politics and Culture, National Politics,
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Thursday, September 24, 2009happy punctuation dayin honor of national punctuation day i have written this post without using a single punctuation mark im sorry if that seems sadistic but you dont have to read it if you dont want to so maybe its not so much that im a sadist as that youre a masochist enjoy ladies and gentlemen treasured readers all it is my distinct pleasure to wish you a happy punctuation day yes its september 24 already where has the year gone when i worked as an intern in the office of us senator james mcclure of idaho one of my responsibilities was to draft responses to constituent mail when the topic or position didnt fit an existing collection of responses that could be sent automatically the first such letter was urging the senator to vote in favor of i forget the name but it was something like national cosmetics day or maybe it was a week i dont recall anyway my first draft was playful for my amusement and that of the office staff it pondered what the women of the world would look like without cosmetics i actually think most of them would look great but thats not the point this actually is not one of those stories where the joke goes in the mail by accident and causes a national embarrassment i wrote a serious draft after that which was approved so i signed it with the signature machine the senators signature and it went in the mail which is not my point in any case it wouldnt make very much sense for me to commemorate talk like a pirate day which just passed by not talking like a pirate since i dont talk like a pirate anyway but since i use punctuation all the time and im pretty good at it if i say so myself i thought it might be a reasonable tribute to national punctuation day if i posted an entire blog post without a single mark of punctuation no periods commas colons semicolons dashes which i overuse apostrophes parenthesis another thing i overuse ellipsis yet another and without any capital letters or paragraph breaks you get the idea punctuation is important to our lives in ways that i cant even illustrate without using it the amazing thing is that some of my dear friends for example on facebook write like this all the time i dont know how they do it and its often hard to read and i sometimes want to block them from my wall but theyre my friends so i dont in any case this tendency toward unpunctuated writing which is no worse than using many exclamation points or question marks in succession seems to be rooted in twin causes a public education system whose employees in many cases dont punctuate let alone write very well and the culture of twitter or text messaging generally where every character can be a labor in itself and some punctuation marks can be hard to access and even if you can type more than twitters limit of 140 characters its hard to imagine why you would want to so happy punctuation day lets never do this again and now im going to proofread this to make sure it sort of makes sense and that i didnt put in any punctuation by accident i think reading it will be painful and if you also think reading it is painful imagine how painful and unnatural it has been to write this post so go forth and punctuate properly never use quotation marks for emphasis here is a fun web site about national punctuation day i havent studied it exhaustively but i think they want you to bake something how long can this go on i want my punctuation back right now later note i just proofread this and removed two fugitive apostrophes yes it was painful to read even more than to write but if you send comments on this post please dont use any punctuation so i dont have to remove it myself its less work for me that way and youll help me celebrate this auspicious day shirl lebaron comments 92409 via facebook david you used a dash above shame your prose was just like proofing my two sons freshman college papers continual run on sentences funny at parent teacher conf last night we discussed this very thing and the fact that grammar has come full circle the teacher telling us that years ago conventional wisdom or unwisdom put parenths there and an exclamation point before and students were encouraged to write in context quotation marks before and after the previous 2 words now they are saying wait wait we need to revisit sentence structure and paragraph building oops put a period there i have to admit i am guilty of the heresy and yet you are still my friend im really a fan of the semicolon and with apologies to the author took this from the website you hyper linked on the next page because this has been painfully long great post david 3 exclamation marks here please with intermittent question marks shirl lebaron comments 92409 via facebook sometimes you get a glimpse of a semicolon coming a few lines farther on and it is like climbing a steep path through woods and seeing a wooden bench just at a bend in the road ahead a place where you can expect to sit for a moment catching your breath lewis thomas notes on punctuation the medusa and the snail shirl lebaron comments 92409 via facebook oops a comma slipped in there david rodeback comments 92409 shirl i cant see the dash or even find it by searching but thanks for making me read this grievous thing three more times carefully looking for it in your first comment you used some capital letters which is punctuation and actually spelling out the names of punctuation marks in their proper places may be cheating too but its hard isnt it i got rid of the capital letters maybe you or your sons should get some tax money back that was paid to the school system that lets students graduate without being able to write delightful lewis thomas quotation dont worry i killed the comma marilyn nielson comments 92409 oh my goodness you sound like a different person without punctuation who would have thought one could owe part of ones personality to punctuation i suppose even when speaking we punctuate verbally if thats the word i want i dont know how to make that sound like a question instead of a statement but anyway we would sound much different if we did not and your post does indeed make me a little more appreciative of something i had taken for granted thank you marilyn nielson comments 92409 ps perhaps you already knew it is also subliminal communications month do you suppose one needs punctuation to communicate subliminally david rodeback comments 92409 marilyn trust me i dont feel like myself at the moment buy books from my amazon store i didnt know about subliminal communications month dont you want to click on my google ads but now that i think about it vote early vote often always vote for heidi i think subliminal communication might actually be easier why dont you send me a check today without punctuation than it would be with punctuation 1000 dollars would be nice what do you think youre the poet john dougall comments 92409 via facebook note four punctuation marks edited out vanna id like to buy a punctuation mark gretchen lambert wiltbank comments 92409 via facebook note several punctuation marks edited out huge gasp gosh i couldnt breathe without a comma or a period david rodeback comments 92409 via facebook john i buy them in bulk gretchen not having all those little stops really slows us down doesnt it im just hoping this doesnt stick and i can type properly tomorrow shirl lebaron comments 92409 via facebook note one instance of punctuation edited out it certainly changes the meaning of things shirl lebaron comments 92409 via facebook the umm have to say lebaron law offices it the dash was in your smiley face above will keep you out of jail as the nose which technically is not to send money to nigeria punctuation but i laughed seeing how you had send it here to reread your prose david rodeback comments 92409 via facebook its always good to hear from the folks at lebaron law offices aka schadenfreude r us i wonder if theres a national acronym day
Copyright 2009 by David Rodeback. |
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