the buzz log

In an era of text messages and tweets, punctuation has been the first to go (followed by vowels and articles like "the" and "a"). Still, National Punctuation Day, founded by a former newsman, continues the fight to uphold order in the English language.

Lost cause or valiant effort? Despite tech trends to the contrary, people do care about punctuation—even if they are mostly schoolkids: In the past 30 days, about 44% of “punctuation” searches on Yahoo! are kids under 13 ... boys alone make up 39% of the searches.

Missed Marks
Comma: Among all the punctuation searches, commas confuse the most—and we're not even talking about serial offenders (as in the debate over whether or not to put a comma before the conjunction and in a series: "'Twilight' vampires are super-strong, glittery, and hot."). Another comma controversy: whether anyone besides a poet should use “comma splice."

Apostrophe: Apostrophes wreak the second-most anguish, with people trying to figure out "plural possessive nouns apostrophes" (e.g. "Stay out of the women's room" and "My classmates' cloaks are in the cloak room") and "rules of use of apostrophe for nonliving things" (e.g. to be at "wit's end" is okay, but "car's door" should be "car door").

As if the English language wasn't confusing enough, an apostrophe doesn't just mean getting all possessive: People go online to figure out literary apostrophes. That's when people talk to an absent person or a concept as though they're in the room, and expect a response (as in, "Love, why do you forsake me?" or "Why, O Great Punctuation God, can't people distinguish between it's and its?"). Yeah, lots of drama involved.

Hyphen: Proper punctuation goes beyond communicating an idea so that there's no misunderstanding. There are social consequences too: Queries into "hyphenating last names" and "hyphenating last names after marriage" dive right into matrimonial politics, which gets multiplied when the offspring come. Something to consider—a premarital punctuation agreement.

Below, courtesy of the company with the trademarked exclamation point, are the dirty dozen of troubling punctuation marks. Don't abuse them. Happy Punctuation Day.*

Most Searched Punctuation Marks on Yahoo!, past 30 days

1. Comma
2. Apostrophe
3. Hyphens
4. Semicolon
5. Question Mark
6. Quotation Marks
7. Ellipses
8. Parentheses
9. Exclamation Point
10. Colon
11. Period
12. Bracket

*No harm was done to any punctuation marks during the writing of this post...we hope.