Center for Scholastic Journalism Blog

Get out the noisemakers! Want some cake and ice cream? Be sure to give presents, wrapped in festive-looking paper. Remember this: National Punctuation Day is worth the celebration.

True, it may seem like only an English composition teacher or a hard-core copyeditor would be excited about this event, but there’s good reason student journalists should pay attention, too.

First, some history…

Former newspaperman Jeff Rubin founded the holiday in 2004, and it’s grown since then. His Web site touts the value of correct punctuation usage 365 days a year with teaching tips, a video package for sale, photos of misused punctuation and even a press release when he broke from AP style and began supporting the serial comma. (Note: THIS writer did NOT use a comma before “and” in the last sentence.)

“Why worry about those dashes and dots?” some student journalists think. “It’s not a big deal. My readers will know what I mean.”

Two reasons: (1) No, your readers won’t always know what you mean. Ever read the premise of “Eats, Shoots & Leaves: The Zero Tolerance Approach to Punctuation,” by Lynne Truss? Punctuation CAN make a difference as the panda indicates. But (2) it can also be a big deal if poor punctuation chips away at your credibility. Sure, only the most punctuation-trained English comp teachers will catch the missing fourth “dot” when an ellipsis is at the end of a sentence, but start throwing around apostrophes in the wrong places, and readers will notice. They’ll notice, and they won’t trust the staff to get other things right.

So, I plan to celebrate today, and, more important, I hope my students celebrate. Eat cake and ice cream, blow the noisemakers — and for heaven’s sake don’t use a comma splice!

Tags: National Punctuation Day