Happy National Punctuation Day

By Liz Tjaden

National Punctuation Day is just around the corner, so polish off your quotation marks and exclamation points and get ready to party!

Jeff Rubin, also known as the Punctuation Man (seriously, he has a cape and everything….) is the founder of National Punctuation Day that is celebrated on Sept. 24. His idea for this day started in 2004 as a clever way to remind professionals and business people about the importance of punctuation. He has turned this day into a way of helping children learn the importance of proper grammar and punctuation at an early age.

It also is a reminder that by not using the correct form of punctuation can cost your company millions of dollars. A Canadian company, Rogers Communications, misplaced a comma in one of its contracts, costing the company almost $2.13 million.

Whoops.

I am a “comma happy” writer who never really learned the correct way to use a comma. My rationale is, “When I feel there should be a comma, so be it!”

Thankfully, as an intelligent and resourceful journalism student, I can now rely on my “Working with Words” book and my “AP Stylebook” to bail me out of these sticky situations.

However, thanks to Rubin, we now have a reason to celebrate the nerds in all of us.