Happy Punctuation Day!?!?!

Seriously?!?  Tomorrow is National Punctuation Day in the US. September 24th is a “celebration of the lowly comma, correctly used quotation marks, and other proper uses of periods, semicolons and the every-mysterious ellipsis.”

It’s also an excellent day to ask the questions: how do they get all these cool and seemingly random celebration days? why don’t we have more of them here in Canada?  Y ¿Incluirá español puntuacion?

Some ways to celebrate National Punctuation Day might include:

• Visiting NationalPunctuationDay.com and review all the proper uses of punctuation marks. Pat yourself on the back for knowing them all.  (Double check to see if all their punctuation marks are being used correctly.)
• Read a newspaper and circle (in red) all the punctuation errors you see. Write a letter to the editor pointing out all the mistakes.
• Take a walk and photograph all the signs you see with incorrectly punctuated words (and email the best to Jeff at NationalPunctuationDay dot com)
• Bake some cookies, and then serve in pairs and call them colons.
• Giggle at some of the examples cited as why we need commas — “it’s time to eat Grandma” vs. “it’s time to eat, Grandma.”  I bet there will be more on someecards.com
• Consider the 8 new “necessary” punctuation marks suggested by CollegeHumor.com such as the sarcastises and/or the andorpersand.
• revel in the fact that a whole day can be dedicated to feeling superior to bad punctuators.

National Punctuation Day was founded in 2004 by Jeff Rubin to promote the proper use of punctuation.  Something my friends (and parents) who are part of the unofficial grammar-police will appreciate.