It’s not yet too late to celebrate one of the most important days of the year: National Punctuation Day! I am not making this up, although my love for quirky holidays is well known. You can check the official web site for the holiday to confirm that this is for real.
With the tag line “A celebration of the lowly comma, correctly used quotation marks, and other proper uses of periods, semicolons, and the ever-mysterious ellipsis,” National Punctuation Day is a great excuse to party tonight. If it’s too late for you to organize something, you can always do it over the weekend. 😉
So how can you celebrate this special day? Jeff Rubin, the founder, shares his game plan (together with the reminder not to overdo it):
- Sleep late.
- Take a long shower or bath.
- Go out for coffee and a bagel (or two).
- Read a newspaper and circle all of the punctuation errors you find (or think you find, but aren’t sure) with a red pen.
- Take a leisurely stroll, paying close attention to store signs with incorrectly punctuated words.
- Stop in those stores to correct the owners.
- If the owners are not there, leave notes.
- Visit a bookstore and purchase a copy of Strunk & White’s The Elements of Style.
- Look up all the words you circled.
- Congratulate yourself on becoming a better written communicator.
- Go home.
- Sit down.
- Write an error-free letter to a friend.
- Take a nap. It has been a long day.
Thinking about my day, I haven’t really followed anything – except for sleeping late! Maybe tomorrow?
Anyhow, if you’re interested in punctuation products, they also have cool stuff in the online shop. You can also check out the recipe for Punctuation Meatloaf (THE official meatloaf of the holiday) in the web site.
I’ll pass up on making the meatloaf, but I might have a drink or two later and make a toast to the brilliant guys behind National Punctuation Day.
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