“A semicolon is not a surgical procedure.”

-Jeff Rubin

Happy National Punctuation Day! September 24, 2008 marks the fifth anniversary of the holiday Jeff Rubin began to honor the under-appreciated, but oh-so-important, vehicle by which to divide our thoughts in order to make them coherent to others and to ourselves (Strunk and White would be so proud).

Frankly, a day like this can only elicit the broadest of smiles from me. I’ve been a good grammar and punctuation devotee ever since 33 comma splices corroded the entire dignity and argument of my 10th grade Macbeth paper. No, I did not sit there like a toady, counting my mistakes to see why I’d been docked so severely. My aggressive teacher had underlined each one; the only comment she gave me was “33 grammatical errors! They’re all comma splices!” She may have been fiendish, but she was also right. Incorrect punctuation can cause damages in ways you would not, perhaps, expect.

Take, for example, the $2 million comma. That’s right, a misplaced comma may cancel a deal Canada-based Rogers Communications Inc. had regarding the construction of utility poles in the Maritimes. What looks like a shrug, a tiny eyebrow or parenthesis on a diet, can change the meaning of a sentence and the corresponding thought it seeks to represent.

A command of punctuation immediately allows a phrase’s sentiment to come across; whereas that same sentiment could be lost in a fog of incomprehensibility or seeming childishness as the result of a simple error.

Orwell knew it. E.B. White wrote about it, and I think we can all give in to our nerdier instincts by celebrating this holiday everyday. No more purple prose! Goodbye comma splices! I sound my barbaric yawp from the rooftops of the world (but only if, when transcribed, it’s punctuated correctly)!

Tags: National punctuation day, the $2 million dollar comma