Last year, when I discovered that there was a “holiday” known as National Punctuation Day, I was ecstatic.

This year, I am more sedate. But I am still happy. Please, take the opportunity to think about punctuation and to celebrate its proper use. Like other aspects of good grammar, punctuation helps clarify communication. Have you ever had people misinterpret what you are saying or writing? Punctuation helps mitigate that. It’s essential.

Last year, the folks who run NationalPunctuationDay.com asked you to celebrate with meatloaf. This year, it’s a less-delicious, but more-creative exercise: poetry. Specifically, they are asking for your best punctuation-related haikus.

They’ve even got a bunch to start you off:

Serial comma.
What is your philosophy?
To use or not to?

Raised by two parens
I’ve been bracketed since youth.
I’m an inside job.

Dot dot ellipses
The yada yada of print.
So on and so forth.

Punctuate or die.
What is a writer to do?
Good writers will know.

You, too, can enter: Send your best 5-7-5 (syllables, that is) poetry to Jeff@NationalPunctuationDay.com to enter. Haikus received by Sept. 30 are eligible for prizes.

And again this year, I will take the opportunity to highlight these blogs:

• Apostrophe Catastrophe
• The “blog” of “unneccesary” quotation marks
• Illiterate Businesses

No, go out and celebrate the day with some sort of punctuation goodness.

Today (Sept. 24) is National Punctuation Day — at least, according to the people who run NationalPunctuationDay.com. It’s the sixth annual, and they’re ready to celebrate — with a baking contest.

Yes, “hold on to your oven mitts,” they say, download the official recipe for Punctuation Meat Loaf (pdf), shape it into the form of a punctuation mark, send in some before-and-after pictures, and you could win a T-shirt.

Unfortunately, as Amy commented, some of the meat loaf pictures look as if they came out of someone’s colon.

Anyway, for a pretty good brief history of the evolution of punctuation,  I really enjoyed this article on About.com, especially this bit at the end:

Countless style guides have spelled out conventions for using the various marks–but they don’t always agree. In modern prose, dashes are in; semicolons are out. Apostrophes are tossed around like confetti, and quotation marks are commonly dropped at random on the most innocent words and phrases.

And so it remains true, as G. V. Carey observed decades ago, that punctuation is governed “two-thirds by rule and one-third by personal taste.”

Despite that, I see tons of people who use punctuation as if it were still the Middle Ages: ie. willy nilly.

Businesses, in particular, should pay particular attention to good grammar. Too often, I see poorly-spelled or -punctuated signs, and it doesn’t leave me with a very good impression of the business. Except, actually, for those times when I think to myself, “Wow, a store run by uneducated rubes! I’ll surely be able to baffle their salesclerks and arrange myself a deal!”

Today’s a good day to highlight these blogs:

• Apostrophe Catastrophe
• The “blog” of “unneccesary” quotation marks
• Illiterate Businesses

At any rate, I know it’s a silly made-up holiday, but I fully support National Punctuation Day.