WHICH punctuation mark personality are you? Weird question, I know. But I have been noticing these punctuation marks more and more lately. They really are what animate the written word. Without them, words and writing would not be half as expressive. The words wouldn’t quite communicate their meaning fully. Punctuation has significance beyond the basic rules of grammar. It is what gives the writing a voice and an inflection. A distinguishable shape, tone and nuance. In short, punctuation makes the words talk.
Let's see who we have here in the punctuation family.
. There is the period. Officially, it marks a declarative sentence. But also, the period, more than any other punctuation mark, says certainty and finality. It clearly shows us where things stop. The End. Nope, I am no period girl.
, The comma separates phrases or items. It is nice and clear and simple. I do like the pause factor, but I am afraid, no, I am no comma.
! The exclamation point! It is a statement of excitement or emphasis. It ends things on a high! It is used abusively and effusively! But there is also a sweet childishness about it that comes through, not too serious or sophisticated. Hmm, there is something about that exclamation point that I do like.
- — The hyphen is there to split a word by syllables, or to connect two half-words, while the dash is there as a connector, and both the splitter and the connector are unlike the comma, which is more of a pause. I gotta say, I do like that dash.
: The colon: it is a cute graphic resembling a set of eyes. It is there to tell us that a list or a quote is coming, or to separate hours or minutes.
; The semicolon, the winking sibling of the colon, separates two independent clauses in a compound sentence.
’ An apostrophe lets us know of a contraction, of a missing letter, or of a plural or a possessive.
( ) Parentheses (curved lines) separate or qualify a remark of fact.
? I think I have narrowed it down to what are “my” two punctuation marks. Are you with me? I ask you, is there not something elusive and enigmatic about that question mark? That curved, almost silhouettelike face profile with the little mysterious dot at its neck? Questions, questions, questions . . . questions that beget answers, that beget learning and understanding . . . questions that remain questions. The older I get, the less answers I have. The more questions . . . the less certainty and the more uncertainty. Hence, that enigmatic curvaceous question mark symbol.
. . . Ah, the ellipses . . . if you have been with me in this column you probably could have guessed . . . those three little dots . . . technically, they indicate that a part of the text has been left out, but it so much more than that . . . you see, to me, those three dots are two more dots that stand together opposite the period and they say: to be continued . . . they are the softness of a transition or ending that is without a sense of finality . . . a lack of rigidity or definitiveness. Like I said, soft. A little more shy. A little more humble. A little more tentative. Open-ended. Gentle.
I don't really know how I got into the ellipsis. I never even noticed I was using it so much until it was pointed out to me. Perhaps it was a laziness or lack in discipline in writing proper grammar. But I sense my profusion of the ellipsis might just mean it is the one.
That is, my punctuation mark.
ALL of the punctuation symbols are part of the personalities of the written word that make it stand tall and fuse with the letters and words to help them come alive on the page.
From the clear line of demarcation and boundary that the period draws, to the connector of the dash and all the way to that enigmatic question mark, they are all part of our expressive punctuation family . . .
Now, tell me, which punctuation symbol are you?
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