Features

By Sara Pokorny pokorny@timesleader.com
Staff Writer   |   Sara Pokorny on Facebook   |   @TLSaraPokorny on Twitter

Did you know, that its National Punctuation Day on “Saturday”!

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A colon should follow ‘IE,’ and commas would come in handy after ‘exposed’ and ‘change.’

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‘You’re’ is a contraction that means ‘you are;’ ‘your’ is the possessive form of ‘you.’

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MARKS TO LIVE BY

Save the apostrophes from extinction; don’t throw them around willy-nilly. Go easy on the commas, too, but don’t forget them when warranted. And please reserve the quotation marks for direct quotes or works titles or at least sarcasm.

• Apostrophe: Indicates the possessive case, as in woman’s coat or man’s hat, but don’t forget that certain words that do not become plural by adding an s still take the apostrophe in the same place, as in women’s coats. An apostrophe also indicates plurals of acronyms and symbols (several M.D.’s). The most common modern-day mistake? Apostrophes used to pluralize nouns, as in, “She has several notebook’s” or “My teacher’s are all nice this year.”

• Colon: Indicates a distinct division in a sentence to show that what follows is an elaboration or summation of what comes before. Example: We need to bring plenty of camping supplies: food, water, a tent and flashlights.

(If you’d like to see a comma after “tent,” don’t be offended but read on. The Oxford, or serial, comma is a matter of style rather than hard-and-fast rule. Journalists most often omit serial commas; lawyers rarely do. To quote Theodore Bernstein: “Grave issues of law have hung on commas.”

• Comma: Indicates the briefest pause of all punctuation marks. One basic rule: Use a comma in a compound sentence with two subjects, two verbs and a conjunction: “I like salt, but I don’t like pepper.” Ditch the comma in “I like salt but don’t like pepper.”

• Semicolon: Almost equal to a full stop, it mainly separates clauses not linked by a conjunction: “Rudeness to the teacher will not be tolerated; do not talk back.”

• Quotation marks: A sign reading “Fresh” Fish can mean something’s really fishy about the fish.

• Hyphen: A hyphen can erase ambiguity. A man-eating shark is different from a man eating shark.

Source: www.nationalpunctuationday.com; Theodore Bernstein’s “The Careful Writer.”

FACEBOOK FAUX PAS

Social-networking websites present a minefield of punctuation and other problems.

No one’s advocating public excoriation, but these status updates or comments that played fast and loose with punctuation can provide a few teaching moments:

• If anyone in the Bay Area knows where I can find Dogfish Head Punkin Ale I am willing to pay it’s weight in gold for it.

• Thanks for the birthday wishes. Its great turning 33.

(Say it’s so, Joe. It’s with an apostrophe means ONLY “it is” or “it has,” no exceptions. Its by itself needs no apostrophe to indicate possession.)

• Getting through the work day then heading to the Phillies game with my two favorite Steph’s! (No need to put an apostrophe in “Stephs.”)

• I guess everything is “closed” today because of this stupid storm. (Why the quotation marks?)

• I just cant stand this head cold, and I still have to go to my nephews football game. (Two apostrophes are needed here.)

• Hope your feeling better soon. (If you mean “you are,” you need an apostrophe in that contraction.)

If you immediately caught everything wrong with that sentence (which should have read, “Did you know it’s National Punctuation Day on Saturday?”) you might especially appreciate this quasi-holiday.

If you’ve never heard of National Punctuation Day, maybe that’s because in this, its eighth year, the founders are trying to draw more attention to what they see as a national problem.

Widespread misuse of punctuation has become evident on a plethora of business signs – Employee’s Only instead of Employees Only; Todays specials instead of Today’s specials – and in social media – “Does anyone know the schedule for the center city bus’s” instead of “center city buses” or “Friends, I need you’re help” instead of “your” help. Even nationally recognized clothing brand Old Navy made a highly publicized mistake last month, printing a whole collection of collegiate T-shirts cheering on various teams with “Lets Go!” instead of “Let’s Go!”

Why the lack of love for punctuation? Is it laziness or just forgetfulness of the basic rules we learned way back when?

Sherri Yeninas, a fifth-grade teacher at State Street Elementary in Larksville, thinks technology plays a part.

“I don’t know that punctuation is no longer important, but it might be that people don’t think about it as much in everyday life because of texting and Internet language,” she said.

Though the abbreviated, acronym-heavy online style of writing is becoming increasingly prevalent, this doesn’t mean schools aren’t stressing traditional writing.

Yeninas teaches Pennsylvania System of School Assessment writing as part of her curriculum. She said punctuation plays a big part not only in the testing but in everyday life.

“When you talk to someone, you can use inflection, tone, facial and body movements,” she said. “You can’t do that in writing. You need to use punctuation to stress those moments, just like you would when you’re talking to someone.”

No matter the reason for misplaced or missing commas, extraneous apostrophes – which don’t make a word plural – and abundance of quotation marks, punctuation faux pas are everywhere.

Former newspaper reporter Jeff Rubin founded National Punctuation Day, and this year educators across the nation are getting involved. Some are challenging students to hit the streets with their smartphones and photograph all the errors they can find. The results will become part of educational videos on YouTube.

“It’s sad to say, but writing skills, punctuation skills, communication skills in general, have just deteriorated over the years,” Rubin said in a press release. “You see it in newspapers, magazines and even books — misspelled words, words used incorrectly. It’s extremely frustrating. I want National Punctuation Day to bring this to the forefront of the American consciousness in a fun, silly way.”

We took to area streets to help the cause and, just so you know, we played fair and even photographed our own slips.