Punctuation Party

You’re listening to A Way with Words, the show about language and how we use it.

I’m Grant Barrett.

And I’m Martha Barnette.

Imagine that all the punctuation marks gave a party.

What would that look like?

Rachel Herbert asked that.

On Twitter, she’s an editor in Seattle, Washington.

She wrote, sometimes I imagine punctuation marks as people at a party.

Comma.

-huh.

-huh.

Okay.

Then what happened?

And the colon makes intense eye contact and says, now look.

And a semicolon, hand you their drink and plate so that they can gesture more freely.

And the period abruptly says, we’re done.

Let’s go.

And I’ve been thinking about that.

Like, what would an asterisk be like at a party?

I think it’s a person who’s constantly surprised.

I don’t know.

It’s the person who walks in on their own surprise party.

Right.

Or they’re like, hold on.

I’ll be right back.

Yeah.

And then I was thinking a tilde would just sit there in the corner going, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Right.

Parentheses are two people leaning toward each other, talking intently, ignoring everyone else, right?

Yeah.

The dash is making a run for the bathroom.

Right.

And maybe the slash is, I don’t know, looking over somebody’s plate.

Right.

Or they’re listing to port because they’ve been drinking.

Right.

I don’t know.

Just one of these things that I think about while driving.

If you have more contributions on what each kind of punctuation would do at a party, hit us up on Twitter @wayword.

And you can call us and email us with your language questions or just to discuss cool things that you read.

877-929-9673 or email words@waywordradio.org.