Making our mark!

Michael Strouse  //  Sep 24, 2013

Making our mark!

It is National Punctuation Day.

Or should I say: 'It's National Punctuation Day!'?

And what better way to celebrate than a book all about a punctuation mark? With a fantastic message that the best thing you can be is yourself, Exclamation Mark is one of my favorites of the year! It tells the story of an exclamation mark that is just trying to fit in...until he meets a new friend that opens the door to a world of new possibilities. He learns that being different can be very exciting!

I thought it would be fun to ask my fellow OOM-ers if they had a punctuation mark that best described them.

  • 'The em dash' — Emma. After all, it is her nickname and she's always in a rush.
  • Kristen also prefers the em dash — she loves the emphasis it adds to a sentence. 
  • Morgan is a semi-colon. She employs them frequently; plus, they look like a winky face.
  • Alex would be an asterisk.*
  • Megan would be a parentheses. (She rarely completes a sentence without inserting some sort of aside.)
  • Nadia is a bullet point:
    • She's a very list-oriented person.
    • She likes to think things out thoroughly.
    • She likes that bulleted lists are organized and logical.
  • What's Tyler? Well, there is no doubt he is a question mark. He's always curious and with his background as a journalist, he's trained to ask questions!
  • Jessica tells me "I would probably be quotation marks. When I was younger, I loved them and would use them as often as I could. As I got older, I majored in history; a discipline that valued the importance of precise quoting."
  • Suzanne decided that she was best described by a combination of punctuation marks. She's moved onto emoticons in the digital age. :)
  • I favor the ellipsis. Suggestive of a pause, intentional omission or sarcasm, I use it often...
  • Lia is the most excited about National Punctuation Day! Our resident punctuation guru, she's definitely an exclamation mark! She dedicates herself to something 110%, and loves that extra punch of enthusiasm that an exclamation mark conveys. (As someone who NEEDS Lia's copy editing skills often, I can tell you, she would probably have a problem with me agreeing wholeheartedly and adding multiple exclamation points. I will do it anyway!!!!!)

 

*Alex has so many ideas swirling in her head that she sometimes feels the need to add a footnote for her audience.