National Punctuation Day!

Today is National Punctuation Day. They have a day for EVERYTHING! But this is definitely a GOOD one….

There’s an article on page A19 of The Star that MAY have been written by a long lost Robinson relative of ours…based SOLELY on our similarly dramatic reaction to misplaced apostrophes that can ONLY be explained either by genetics or a close proximity to my mother. In his article he references a website Apostropheabuse.com. As someone who has been INFUSED with the HORRORS of bad grammar my entire life, just perusing the signs on the website made me cringe. And the more I saw the more visceral the reaction – something parallel to what dogs must sense when children release balloons in slow agonizingly high pitched squeaks of rubber on rubber air leakage….

I know, I know, I shouldn’t point the finger. You are all well aware of my own grammatical deficiencies - in particular, the confusion over its vs it’s. For some reason, my apostrophe alarm neglects all words that start with “it”. BELIEVE ME, it is not something that passes through my mother’s grammatical security system unnoticed. In fact, sometimes I throw in the odd misspelled “its” just to make sure she’s still alive and reading my blog.

So maybe I’m not one to talk. But I think that Punctuation Day is a fine way for the grammatical neurotics (or the unfortunate children of such) to channel their energy in more constructive way’s.

(I did that on purpose – if you didn’t catch it, please check out www.apostropheabuse.com if you STILL don’t get it…well, perhaps a date with my mother is in order?)