{"id":224,"date":"2010-09-22T11:39:06","date_gmt":"2010-09-22T09:39:06","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/fascinating-america.com\/blog\/?p=224"},"modified":"2015-04-27T21:48:01","modified_gmt":"2015-04-27T19:48:01","slug":"the-heroes-of-good-grammar","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/fascinating-america.com\/blog\/the-heroes-of-good-grammar\/","title":{"rendered":"The heroes of good grammar"},"content":{"rendered":"

From time to time, we need to take a moment to recognize the unsung heroes who keep our society functioning the way it should. They work with untiring<\/span> dedication<\/span>. They are willing to put the greater good<\/span> ahead of their own well-being<\/span>. Without them, everything would collapse.<\/p>\n

I’m talking, of course, about those who teach, and fight for, proper punctuation<\/span>, without which all written language would fall apart. One of these heroes, Jeff Rubin, has declared this Friday, September 24, to be National Punctuation Day<\/b> in the United States.<\/p>\n

At www.nationalpunctuationday.com<\/a>, Rubin explains why punctuation matters. He also chronicles<\/span> how people celebrate the event: by composing<\/span> haikus<\/span> about punctuation, baking meat loaf<\/span> in the shape of a question mark<\/span>, and buying a copy<\/span> of Strunk & White\u2019s The Elements of Style<\/i><\/a>, the classic American guide to good writing.<\/p>\n

While I can’t imagine Rubin’s punctuation rap<\/a> to be very effective, his other suggestion has certainly caught on<\/span>. “Take a leisurely<\/span> stroll<\/span>, paying close attention to store signs with incorrectly punctuated words,” he says. “Stop in those stores to correct the owners. If the owners are not there, leave notes.”<\/p>\n

Two friends changing the world<\/h2>\n

That’s exactly what Jeff Deck<\/b> and his friend Ben Herson<\/b> did for several months in 2008 as they traveled around the entire United States<\/a>. Going from one town to the next, they saw countless signs, usually with missing or misplaced<\/span> apostrophes, but often with badly misspelled<\/span> words. They tried to speak to the store owners, offering to change the signs with their own markers<\/span> and correction fluid<\/span>.<\/p>\n

In most cases, they encountered<\/span> not the manager, but a minimum-wage<\/span> worker who acknowledged the misspelling but did not want to authorize anything without the absent<\/span> boss’s permission. Some bosses were happy to let them make the change; others claimed the wrong spelling was a legitimate<\/span> variant, or simply refused permission.<\/p>\n

Deck and Herson chronicled<\/span> their humorous adventures on their blog. Each entry<\/span> comes with a photo and an explanation of what the mistake is and why it is wrong. Last month, the edited chronicle finally appeared in book form as The Great Typo Hunt: Two Friends Changing the World, One Correction at a Time<\/i>.<\/p>\n

“There have been books about spelling and grammatical errors, and there have been books about quixotic<\/span> road trips, but ours is the first to combine the two \u2014 not to mention the first book about fixing typos rather than complaining about them,” Deck says.<\/p>\n

Why is it important?<\/h2>\n

Punctuation is vital<\/span>. It’s like the symbols in a musical score<\/span><\/strong> that tell you what notes you’re looking at, how fast to play them, where the measures<\/span> begin and end and when to take a rest<\/span> before playing the next note. There’s no arguing about what those musical symbols mean and whether it’s OK to leave one out, or put in one too many, just because somebody is not sure how to use them.<\/p>\n

Punctuation symbols are also like road signs<\/b>. They allow us to read through a text and understand it with no ambiguities<\/span>, just as rules of the road allow us to arrive somewhere unharmed.<\/p>\n

Think of the period<\/span> as a stop sign. You need to stop at the end of a sentence to prevent unrelated<\/span> ideas from colliding<\/span>. A comma indicates<\/span> a curve in the road; you slow down in order to find out where the sentence is taking you. A colon<\/span> tells you to pay attention because something important is coming up. A semicolon<\/span> is like a right turn on red.<\/p>\n

So on that note: drive safely and have a happy Punctuation Day!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

From time to time, we need to take a moment to recognize the unsung heroes who keep our society functioning the way it should. They work with untiring dedication. They are willing to put the greater good ahead of their own well-being. Without them, everything would collapse. I’m talking, of course, about those who teach, and fight for, proper punctuation, … >><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mi_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[110],"tags":[13,16,111],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/fascinating-america.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/224"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/fascinating-america.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/fascinating-america.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/fascinating-america.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/fascinating-america.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=224"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"http:\/\/fascinating-america.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/224\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1678,"href":"http:\/\/fascinating-america.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/224\/revisions\/1678"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/fascinating-america.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=224"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/fascinating-america.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=224"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/fascinating-america.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=224"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}