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I Punctuate; Therefore, I Amby Lorie Boucher
Conveniently, the Punctuation Personality Indicator (PPI) slots all of the world’s personalities into nine categories. The more jovial first cousin of the screeching ALL-CAPSinator, the Over-Exclaimer (OE) is either perpetually surprised or very easily excited. Events are so astonishing and/or thrilling to the OE that a mere single exclamation point simply cannot convey the depth of the sentiment. And so the OE uses a series of exclamation points, their number directly proportional to the intensity of the statement that precedes them. "Oh my God, that petunia pink cowl-neck twinset totally brings out your eyes!!!" exclaims the Over-Exclaimer, punctuated with an air-kiss hello. Incidentally, scientific research indicates that this breed has multiplied exponentially with the incidence of e-mail. Holding down the shift and the #1 key for a few seconds requires far less effort than pushing lines and dots into paper. And so we are at risk of living in an exhausting, over-demonstrative, super-exclamatory world. Ugh. Join me in exterminating the OE. The Super-Interrogator (SI) is eternally perplexed; a single question mark cannot communicate the profundity of the SI’s confusion. So puzzling is the SI’s query that it must be amplified with a series of question marks. "Why do people like cheese?" is a simple question of interest. "Why do people like cheese???" implies that the SI can’t fathom, on this green earth, why anyone would put stinky, blue-molded milk curd into their mouth. Many SIs find their way into the editing field, where they can indulge their penchant for multiple question marks at the first sign of even a mildly ambiguous phrase or turn of logic. They trounce the unsuspecting writer with a barrage of red question marks, implying that the reader could not possibly be expected to understand such a confounding, ill-worded sentence. This overly critical subcategory of SI is manipulative — it is not that the SI is too slow to get the point, it is that the SI thinks the writer is too slow to make it properly. Resist the urge to counter the SI with multiple exclamation points. There is no excuse for being that annoying. So proud are Pedants of their ability to correctly apply the semi-colon that the urge to display this capacity at every opportunity is irresistible. A highfalutin show-off, this breed is often born in first-year university classes, where the fledgling Pedant first attempts to stand on his* knobby, tentative academic legs. In an effort to appropriate the rhythmic lull of scholarly diction and style, the Pedant inserts a semi-colon between all related thoughts. Debating with the Pedant is a recommended cure for insomnia. Sleepless no more! When the Educator can pry himself away from the Public Access channel long enough to write, the resulting text is riddled with colons. Whatever follows a colon is never offered hypothetically — it is a fact. The Educator makes only statements, never suggestions. Ask the Educator "What is the meaning of life?" and he will respond with the same certainty as when asked what’s for dinner. Don’t feel bad for hating the Educator. He has friends: Pedants. The Drone is unimpressed with the fancy variety of punctuation marks and sticks to the good ol’ meat-and-potatoes period. The Drone hasn’t the time for inflection; he gets right to the point, as it were. Drones find employment as automated voice attendants and National Geographic narrators. Without the Drone, we would never know the car door is ajar. The wise-cracking Quipper uses parentheses as a subversive device to slip asides into statements, like a jokey, visual elbow to the side. Parentheses create a certain intimacy with the reader, a "you-know-what-I’m saying" sort of kinship. "Jake asked me out the other day (as if), and I had to come up with a believable excuse right on the spot," explains the Quipper. "I told him I had to wash my hair (read: forever). Is that heinous?" The sassy, postmodern Quipper has no unwritten thoughts and watches too much Dennis Miller. But we love the Quipper (if tolerance is love). Why impose the authoritative finality of the period when the meandering comma can extend a sentence indefinitely? The Rambler is too insecure to make anything so assertive as a point, and so avoids it as long as possible, sending you on a grumbling, frustratingly fruitless hunt for the period. Ramblers are wandering, aimless window-shoppers who can never commit to buying anything. They insist on the importance of "the process, not the product," or "the path, not the destination." They are insufferable. In addition, there are also those Ramblers who overuse the comma as a method of clinging to the rhythm of speech, resisting the requirement to write things down at all. Hey, if you want to talk, use the phone. To all Ramblers: no one reads Faulkner for a reason. The Cliff-Hanger must have suffered some period-related trauma as a child because he avoids it at all costs. While the Rambler meanders around endlessly in comma-land, he at least arrives at the period eventually. The Cliff-Hanger’s psychosis is far more advanced. Nothing can force the Cliff-Hanger into asking a direct question or making a clear-cut statement. "I’m thinking of heading up to the cottage on the weekend … so if you know the directions … " What? Does he need directions? Does he want us to join him? It’s all a big mystery. Tune in next week … Worse than the overuse of any punctuation mark is the total rejection of all punctuation. The absence of punctuation is often paired with the doubly irritating rejection of that other constricting imposition — capitalization. "punctuation is just The Man controlling self-expression right it’s like totally confining my ideas i can’t be jailed by your dictatorial punctuation regime man i’m all about the freedom the flow of emotion man yeah." The hippie treats every piece of communication like some stream-of-consciousness experiment. Ironically, the hippie turns every pacifist editor’s thoughts to violence. Where would we be without the Over-Exclaimer, the Super-Interrogator, the Pedant, the Educator, the Drone, the Quipper, the Rambler, the Cliff-Hanger, and the hippie? Without them, editors would have little to bond over. We love to hate these overusers of punctuation, to peck at them mercilessly, like superior literary vultures. Without them, what would we do for fun? *The masculine, singular pronoun is used throughout for simplicity and is not intended to imply that the display of freakish and annoying punctuation tendencies is a uniquely male trait. Editor’s Note: The personalities described above are purely fictional. Any resemblance to real people, alive or
dead, is purely coincidental, but funny as hell. Lorie Boucher admits to Quipper tendencies. She is a Contributing Editor for Writer’s Block.
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FEATURE
More than the words we write, the way we write them is considered by some
to be a reliable indicator of personality. Perfect, oversized script? Drippy, sugary, kindergarten teachers who sing the alphabet and scold in rhyme.
Bubble letters and hearts dotting i’s? Bubblegum-smacking, hair-twirling teens squealing boy band gossip. Tight, jagged, EKG-monitor scribbles?
Angry, no-one-understands-me artists. But really, how can the involuntary metacarpal twitchings of handwriting have anything to do with the way we
act, react, and interact? My own tiny, messy handwriting would suggest years of medical school and a shy, academic timidity. Yet the screams of
laughter at that prospect from those who know me would deafen you, dear reader. No, it is punctuation that mirrors our personality, punctuation that
exposes our true spirits, punctuation that reveals the soul. The punctuation that saturates our writing, that is, the punctuation marks we choose to
overuse, is the real ink blot test of personality.
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