As you probably know, I just celebrated my most major of all holidays — Talk Like a Pirate Day. Another holiday has just passed — National Punctuation Day. If you were reading this blog a year ago, you know that I did celebrate the day — well, actually I just mostly complained about punctuation… or the lack of it, to be specific.
Punctuation Day always comes right after TLAP Day and I’m usually still exhausted from all that celebrating and this year we went out with a friend to celebrate her birthday, so the day got by me again without the attention it probably deserves.
But the punctuation things that annoyed me last year still do this year, so let’s review and expand on them a bit. Again, they pretty much all have to do with “texting.” Most of you, and myself, have been communicating via text for a while now. Even I have to admit it’s quick, convenient, and usually makes some amount of sense.
Often when I see it happening I wonder… is it rude to text with other people around? I guess there’s no yes or no answer to this one — it depends on the situation. Some people believe it’s always rude, inconsiderate and distracting to be on the phone sending text messages when someone else is right in front of you. Sometimes, depending on how it’s handled, the action can send a “you’re not important enough to me” vibe to the other person. A lot of people think a person should give all their attention to whoever they’re physically with and most text can wait.
Last year I indicated that I thought people’s writing skills were going down the toilet as they became proficient at texting. My opinion hasn’t really changed and my thoughts on the subject are that all things being equal, you usually come across better if your writing is well put together. However in non-professional or less formal situations fussing over every last comma, capitalization or punctuation mark may be a bit unnecessary. I’m beginning to agree that as long as the other person can grasp your meaning, it doesn’t matter that you write something like “u” instead of “you.” But — if the message is truly childishly written and incomprehensible, that’s unacceptable and the person should be encouraged to make their writing at least a bit more coherent. I realize that today a lot of people think it’s more important to fire off a message quickly, an the composing perfectly formed sentences isn’t essential.
I don’t like texts that go to a lot people — they all seem to respond, and my phone beeps with every response… I don’t like it when it suddenly gets quite and I look around and see someone (maybe more than one) in the group busy texting… I don’t like it when someone calls, and I can’t answer right then and I immediately get a text that they left me a voice mail… I don’t like it when someone responds to my text with “k” — don’t they have an “o” on their phone or is it too much trouble to punch one more key?
I read something recently that a study had concluded that the use of a period in text messages made the response sound less sincere than those responses with no punctuation. If the response is a handwritten note, people expect to see the period — but not in a text message.
The same study also indicated that if you’re apologizing for something, you should do it face to face, not in a text.
Anyhow, punctuation is important — the exact same sentence with and without a simple comma often has a very different meaning — for example: Let’s eat Grandpa! and Let’s eat, Grandpa!
English professors often ask their classes to punctuate the following sentence: Woman without her man is nothing. Usually half the class punctuates it as: Woman: without her, man is nothing. The other half usually comes up with: Woman, without her man, is nothing.
So those squiggly little marks do change things — maybe punctuation deserves more than just its own day….
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