Finally ! A national observance I can, as an educator, relate to. I mean, I can serve as a fine example on April Fool’s Day and all, but Bastille Day, Ember Day –any of them, Sadie Hawkins Day (I do miss Al Capp, though), Lammas Day, Cheeseburger Day, Spaghetti Day, Dress up Your Pet Day, Appreciate Law Enforcement Day, Trivia Day, Wife Appreciation Day (I can see some rationale for this one–not observed often enough)–all have, no doubt, some fine reasons behind them but not something which I am likely to get into.
I am speaking, of course, about National Punctuation Day, coming to us this year on September 24–Saturday. Get out your party hats and noisemakers, confetti too, if you’re going to “do it up brown” for the occasion. Actually, I came across several suggestions for observing this day in a suitable manner. To wit : Start off by spending time criticizing the mistakes of others; correct your own. Then check out any contracts which you may be a party to; an errant comma cost one company $2.13 million. Do crossword puzzles to take a break; no punctuation required.
Enter into a debate over the so-called “Oxford comma”–things can get rather heated among grammarians & punctuation pedants. Ponder the fact that what we mostly call the “hashtag” or the “pound” symbol is officially an “octothorpe”; use this in conversation. Similarly, recognize the interesting fact that in Israel the @ symbol is known as the “strudel” and in Russia the word for it means “little dog”.
Punctuation Day is to recognize the importance of all ‘“the typographical symbols, spaces and other mutually-agreed-upon symbols which aid in understanding written text”. The purpose of punctuation is “to communicate the proper meaning and intention the writer means to convey in his/her text.” One of the more entertaining examples of which is the T-shirt that is out there saying :” Punctuation Saves Lives : Let’s eat, Grandma OR Let’s eat Grandma.” Elder relatives all appreciate the difference.
The first known document with any kind of recognizable punctuation is known as the Mesha Stele–also known as the Moabite Stone, a slab of basalt with inscription of interest to Biblical scholars and dated somewhere around 900 B.C. (or B.C.E.). The Greeks had some minimal punctuation circa 200 B.C.E. ( You can name-drop Aristophanes of Byzantium, komma and kolon when discussing this) But, of course, most of what we know of the written word in ancient times is derived from inscriptions–not much need for punctuation there. What really got punctuation rolling, so to speak, was the copying of scripture–Bibles–around A.D. (C.E.) 400 when the monks in monasteries were hand-printing Bibles, mostly to be read aloud in the churches; most of the congregants couldn’t read anyway (Some of the copiers couldn’t read very much themselves; they were just doing their jobs. Much of the early work was done in scriptura continua (simply strings of letters with the occasional break). Punctuation was added to indicate words, end of thought (sentence), questions, lists, and so forth. This was expanded upon with the advent of mass printing, a’ la Gutenburg and the expansion of anything written for public consumption…some of which is not worth consuming anyway–waste of a good tree–or several.
And, finally, the arrival of the computer and its concomitant technology has overturned, re-purposed and enlarged the whole field in interesting and sometimes inscrutable ways.
Consider the emoticon : What’s that about? Who interprets those? How did the period become a “dot”? What about those octothorpes? There are now whole new ways to screw things up, partly because too many folks just don’t realize that the purpose of these little marks is to clarify the text, not just decorate it. And, besides, nobody proofreads anymore. How about Yahoo Shopping announcing “National Punctusation Day” ? Or Rosine’s Cafe in Monterey, CA offering Egg’s Benedict (Those chickens are so possessive) ? Or Old Navy dealing in college and university T-shirts with no apostrophe. Contemplate the difficulty in responding to the announcement about “Your dinner” versus the horror of discovering that “You’re dinner.” There’s a million of ‘em, folks. There are punctuation games, punctuation cartoons, a website for National Punctuation Day which offers a whole raft of other divertissements for the grammar nerds among us!
!@#$%^&*()_+=:;”’<>,.?/ And more.
