Punctuation

Do you cringe when you see misplaced commas, semi-colons and quotation marks? How about if you spot excessive ellipses and adrift apostrophes? Have you ever had a heated discussion about the serial comma, or better yet, debated whether that extra comma should instead be called an Oxford comma?  

Punctuation pundits pose some odd questions, but punctuation itself shouldn’t raise questions. Punctuation should clarify the meaning of a sentence.

Years ago, a legal tiff between Rogers and Bell Aliant quantified the high stakes of punctuation gone awry: a million dollars. The battle stemmed from a single comma in a contract agreement.

Usually the stakes aren’t quite as high. For example, a colleague once invited me to join everyone in a meeting room to enjoy Halloween candy. His invitation, a sticky note on my computer display, read:

Join us in the boardroom. Lets eat, Candy!

Eeek! I hope nobody has ever nicknamed me Candy. Back then, I didn’t work with anyone by that name either, so it’s safe to assume that the invitation wasn’t meant for someone else. I’d also like to think that my colleague dropped the apostrophe from let’s merely because he wrote the note in such a hurry. 



Sure, I’ve scoffed at my share of improper punctuation in the workplace, but I try to suppress my inner critic. That is, until the punctuation gaffes lead me to question a sentence's intended meaning. Considering that most of my co-workers have graduate degrees, I don’t think it’s asking too much for them to know when to use its or it’s, let’s or lets, DGs or DG’s, and so on.

When I spot posters, building signs, ads and newspaper articles with glaring punctuation problems, my chuckles quickly fade to sighs. I know I’m not alone in feeling this way. Check out my friend’s fab “But for the apostrophe, it was a perfect lunch” blog post.

Ouch.
As an avid reader and librarian by training,
I like this poster's intended message.
I can even let the exclamation mark stand,
but the comma and uppercase letters must go. 



En dashes, hyphens, parentheses, interrobangs, colons and other punctuation marks are important to some of us. On a daily basis, people snap pictures and submit them to online photo collections of punctuation blunders for everyone to enjoy. Authors pen books (e.g., Comma Sense, Eats, Shoots and Leaves) and write articles.

Even in a world where we are restricted to 140-character tweets, properly applied punctuation leads to being understood, which equals

      AWESOME!

I chose today's blog topic as a tribute to National Punctuation Day, which Americans celebrate on September 24th.