They’re ‘passionate’ about punctuationBy Phil Kloer, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, September 24, 2008
Today is National Punctuation Day, the day set aside to lament bad punctuation and celebrate the good. As usual, there will be the traditional parades, rallies, walk-a-thons, TV specials, speeches by the presidential candidates and fireworks at dusk.
But amid all that hoopla, take a quiet moment to salute those unsung heroes who are always on the “lookout” for “misplaced” quotation marks. You can find them chuckling over them on the Internet at The “Blog” of “Unnecessary” Quotation Marks (http://www.quotation-marks.blogspot.com/) or cavorting in the Facebook group Quotation Mark “Hunters.”
“People don’t think that punctuation means things, so they just throw it in there,” says Bethany Keeley, a Ph.D. student at the University of Georgia who runs the blog.
“Most of the time people are using the quotes to draw attention to something,” she adds. And the abusers seem unaware that putting words in quotes usually signifies irony or some sort of wink.
On the blog, people submit “photos” of signs in which the quote marks make no sense and are, in fact, sometimes mocking the very words they hoped to “emphasize.”
Thus the high school banner exhorting the basketball team to do its “best,” or the sign welcoming visitors to “Historic” Fort Meade. A woman in the Facebook group said her mother made her a wedding album and captioned a photo “Here comes ‘the Bride’.” . . .
So on National Punctuation Day, while others ponder the slackening of “standards” of the serial comma or the maddening misuse of the apostrophe in “its,” the “crusade” against unnecessary quotation marks goes on.
Learn more about National Punctuation Day and the people behind it. At http://www.nationalpunctuationday.com/.
~ Complete story here
I love this article. It's the first time I've seen any sort of explanation for why people are so bad with punctuation. Here comes "the Bride"?
ReplyDeleteI hope that in coming years we rediscover that punctuation has a necessary function. English teachers didn't just invent this stuff for job security; these funny little dots are essential for clear communication. Thanks for the article.