Ten Ways to Celebrate National Punctuation Day

I'm sure I don't have to tell you that September 24 is National Punctuation Day. For weeks we've been gathering dashes, calling up old commas, and hiding gaily wrapped colons where (we think) the kids can't find them. So now that we've hung all those apostrophes with care, let's kick out the stops and celebrate!

1. Introduce your friends, relatives, and colleagues to the Oxford comma.
   Trust me: you don't need a college education for this one.



2. Drop hyphens from compound words that follow a noun.
   Take every one of your well-written essays; then lose the hyphen if the essay is especially well written.



3. Join the Campaign to Abolish the Apostrophe.
   Or if that sounds too reckless, enlist in the Apostrophe Protection Society instead.



4. Fire off an interrobang--but don't get punked by the pomma point.
   At this special time of the year, shouldn't we be thinking about some of the less fortunate marks of punctuation?!



5. Repair a comma splice.
   You can fix a splice with a conjunction--but first make sure the sentence is really broken.



6. Pause . . . for an ellipsis.
   Just don't exceed your limit of three dots.



7. Recite the punctuation poem.
   Of course, the "Dictaphone Bard" should be a part of every family's National Punctuation Day festivities.



8. Explain to your children why punctuation matters.
   In the end it all comes down to love and money.



9. Remove quotation marks from any indirect quotations.
   Your friends will say, "Thank you!"



10. But no matter what else you do, don't quote me!