| 7 Wacky Ways to Celebrate National Punctuation Day! Sep 24th 2012, 08:00 National Punctuation Day (USA) falls on September 24 each year. It's a chance to review your knowledge of all things punctuation and to puncture any misleading usages of your punctuation marks! This article provides a few ways that you can get into the spirit of the day. - Show punctuation some love. If you're someone who likes to throw a comma here and a colon there without too much thought and end your sentences with a spattering of exclamation marks, it's possible you're already enamored of punctuation, albeit in a way that probably needs some revision. However, many people dread using punctuation, finding it about as useful as a locked door in front of the candy store. The reality is somewhere in between––too much punctuation can be stifling, while too little can result in all sorts of misunderstandings and not all of them amusing anecdotes of the "eats shoots and leaves" variety. It might help to grasp that punctuation serves as the road signs for writing that our sighs, pauses, pitch, stresses and shrieks provide in speech. Punctuation is basically a way of alerting the reader to breaks and the need for emphasis that might otherwise be missed. Punctuation deserves love because it helps your reading turn effortless and enjoyable; it ensures that less mistakes are made and more sense is created. The sooner you stop thinking only mystics and grammar experts have a real handle on punctuation, the sooner you can embrace its utility!
- Before feeling scared, be aware that there is a lot more flexibility allowed in punctuation than you may have been taught to think. Indeed, a good way to approach punctuation is to remind yourself that it is only wrong if it distorts or hides the message you intend to put across. Put that way, it's not so scary, right?
- More than anything, focus on the relationships of the parts of your sentence to the whole and how a reader can (or can't) separate the essential information from the non-essential. If you can get away without much punctuation and still retain the full sense, that's just fine.
- Review your use of punctuation. Maybe you're using it with absolute perfection or maybe you're not using it at all but today is a great day to review how you're using it. It's not asking a lot of you––most grammar books deal with punctuation in the space of 10 to 20 pages, usually filled with plenty of juicy examples. But to save you even having to go to the library to find such a book, you can start your quick revision by reading How to use English punctuation properly. If you feel confident after reading this article, perhaps that's enough reviewing for now. But if you feel enthused to learn more, it's worth borrowing a grammar book that gives a little background history as well as explanatory rules––this understanding helps the rules to stick a lot better. Oh, and be sure to look for a grammar author with a sense of humor––they tend to be the norm these days, so avoid those ancient tomes that do little more than scold the uninitiated (see list in next step below).
- Don't be afraid to explore how punctuation usage varies according to different style manuals and across different English speaking nations. You will have your eyes opened wide to realize that the way you use punctuation may not necessarily be the "correct" way somewhere else! For example, British English and American/Canadian English have exactly opposite rules on when to use full or single quotation marks.
- If you really want to push your understanding, spend time looking for differences in punctuation usage between English and a second language that you speak, such as Spanish or French. What new punctuation marks does the other language have that are not used in English at all? Does it express a meaning not found in English?
- Find out some quirky facts about punctuation. More things in English grammar are driven by what technology can and cannot do than you might realize. For example, newspaper editors were long unable to transmit brackets over newswires. Hence, what was technologically impossible started to inform the actual writing approach and they just stopped using them. Whether or not brackets are something you even want to use in your daily writing is beside the point––the stories behind punctuation can be a whole lot more fun and using the punctuation. Good places to find the lowdown on punctuation history include grammar books, decent dictionaries and online sites dedicated to all things grammatical. Here are some book suggestions to get you started (they've informed much of this article):
- Patricia O'Connor, Woe is I: The Grammarphobe's Guide to Better English in Plain English
- June Cosgrove, Grammar Snobs Are Great Big Meanies: A Guide to Language for Fun & Spite
- Rob Colter, Grammar to Go: The Portable A-Zed Guide to Canadian Usage.
- Make wearable punctuation. Stencil a t-shirt or craft a badge that features a punctuation mark. Choose whichever mark you like the most––perhaps you're a question mark-o-phile or perhaps you prefer exclamation marks. Whatever it is, wear it boldly and be ready to engage in conversation with some fascinating facts about the wonders of the punctuation mark you're parading. Help people to discover something about punctuation that they didn't know before!
Funky punctuation nail art is another option. - If you haven't time to whip up a t-shirt or badge, consider printing out some larger-than-usual punctuation marks and sticking them somewhere that people will take notice and stop and ask questions, like your office cubicle or door, or your bag, etc.
- Spot punctuation in unusual places during the day. Punctuation can be turned into a feature on roads, storefronts, on transportation, etc. It can also be found in more unusual places, unintended, such as in a pattern in nature or the way your cat curls her tail. Take photos of your favorites and share them with friends online.
Find unusual occurrences of punctuation marks, including your pets. - Bake a cake or some cookies that feature punctuation. Learning isn't all drudgery––you can munch your way through punctuation too. Here are some tasty punctuation baked goods ideas:
- Bake a cake in the shape of a question mark, comma or an exclamation mark. If you can't be bothered to fiddle with the shapes, bake two round cakes and put them together in the formation of a colon, on the same platter. Be sure to point out what it is though!
- Bake cookies in the shape of question marks (as shown in the image), exclamation marks or commas. These shapes are fairly easy to shape in cookie dough––exclamation and questions marks are a little harder as you need to final dot below to complete the cookie and it can easily be lost from its partner when displaying, so use the clever line method shown in the image.
- Frost cookies or cakes with punctuation marks. This is probably the easiest way to make the full range of punctuation marks without having to test your culinary skills too much.
- Cut a pie topping in the shape of a punctuation mark.
- Throw a punctuation party. Here is where the phone gets going big time. You get to share your love of punctuation with others over all things punctuation. For this party, here are some punctuated suggestions:
- Bake punctuation food as in the previous step and display on the food table. Get even more creative and cut food such as vegetables and fruit into punctuation marks. It's recommended that you get some friends to help out here or you could be at it all day.
- Decorate the party room with punctuation marks. These can be printed, stitched, papier mâchéd, hand drawn, painted, whatever. Hang in strategic places. It doesn't hurt to scatter around a few grammar books as well, so that people can delve deeper into the mysteries of punctuation.
- Have games focused on punctuation. You'll need to put a little effort into making the games, such as printing out etc. One example for a game is a series of sentences missing their punctuation, increasing in difficulty. Find sources of such sentences online, then print them out. Participants are timed and the person who has the most correct at the end wins a prize. Charades could be another game, only people have to act out punctuation marks and get people to guess which one they're portraying. Spot-the-incorrect punctuation mark could be the basis of another game. And if you want to make things really hard, grab different style manuals and hold a competition to see who can match the punctuation to the correct style manual. The depth of your games really depends on just how geeky your guests are when it comes to all things punctuation!
- Send guests home with a little bag of cookies decorated with punctuation marks and a small grammar book (you could even make a quick booklet focused solely on punctuation).
- Put a sign on your car saying "Happy Punctuation Day."
- What are some punctuation marks? They are: periods, brackets, exclamation marks, question marks, colons, semi-colons, commas, dashes, parentheses, quotation marks and slashes. That's plenty for you to digest!
- Be aware that many people use punctuation incorrectly but by force of always doing it that way, are fairly insistent that they're doing right (otherwise known as a bad habit). Don't fuss too much unless it's official documents or polished writing for publication––it's hardly likely to endear you on a forum or in a chat room if you start pointing out the problems with your fellow chatter's punctuation.
- If you're a good stitcher, making some felt toys in the shape of punctuation marks is fun and you can give the toys away to friends and to students in need of encouragement.
Edit Warnings - Avoid overdoing the concentration on punctuation if the person in front of you starts to glaze over when expressing your interest in it!
- Too much punctuation is as bad as none or too little (too many commas induce comas). Don't add punctuation just because you feel it dresses up your writing. Try to reread your work a day later and see if that punctuation is doing what it should be, once you have a little distance from being deeply involved in writing it.
Edit Things You'll Need - Food ingredients
- Grammar books or online resources (don't forget podcasts, there are some excellent grammar ones available for free)
- Craft or similar items to fix a t-shirt, your nails, or whatever so that you can create wearable punctuation
- Entertainment items, game gear and goodie bags if throwing a punctuation party
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