It’s Time To Celebrate National Punctuation Day!

(PCM) Each year on September 24, we celebrate National Punctuation Day, which is a day to celebrate the proper and correct usage of various punctuation. It is a day to be sure that all of our commas, semicolons, quotation marks, etc are all used properly. It is also a day to congratulate those that do make use of proper punctuation and call out those who continue to make errors. Many people celebrate National Punctuation Day by posting funny or silly images of misused punctuation that they see in everyday life on social media. Jeff Rubin founded National Punctuation Day back in 2004 and has also created an incredibly helpful list of ways that one can honor this special day.

• Sleep late.
• Take a long shower or bath.
• Go out for coffee and a bagel (or two).
• Read a newspaper and circle all of the punctuation errors you find (or think you find, but aren’t sure) with a red pen.
• Take a leisurely stroll, paying close attention to store signs with incorrectly punctuated words.
• Stop in those stores to correct the owners.
• If the owners are not there, leave notes.
• Visit a bookstore and purchase a copy of Strunk & White’sThe Elements of Style.
• Look up all the words you circled.
• Congratulate yourself on becoming a better written communicator.
• Go home.
• Sit down.
• Write an error-free letter to a friend.
• Take a nap. It has been a long day.

Most of us probably do not even realize how much we use punctuation on a daily basis, however as times change so does grammar and punctuation. For example, it is now acceptable, at least in the world of online social media, to use emojis in place of traditional punctuation marks as they both seem to convey the same meaning. The key focus and use of punctuation in the first place was to aid us in understanding by giving us clues as to how surrounding words should be interpreted. Placing an happy or angry faced emoji at the end of a sentence can show excitement or anger the same as an exclamation point. Scholars and grammarians are not overly thrilled about the ways in which technology has been shaping our language, however it is all part of the overall evolution and we are nearly certain that within a few years language and punctuation will have evolved yet again!