National Punctuation Day

I’m a bit behind, apparently, in wishing everyone Happy National Punctuation Day (which was Saturday).  What’s that?  Good question.  It’s only been on the books for six years, hasn’t become a Hallmark holiday yet, but might be worth exploring.  Punctuation Day creator Jeff Rubin, from California, said he started the day to instruct about the good manners of proper punctuation and to allow for venting of punctuation pet peeves.  His website is full of funny examples of wrongly punctuated statements, like a sign for a day care center called “Diane’s Play Pen for Little Genius’s.”  <Shudder> 

I remember one of my teachers asking our class, “Doesn’t anyone know anything about commas?  It looks like you grab a handful of them and throw them at your finished essays and where they land is where they land.”  Yes, I’m still traumatized!  J  (Which makes me wonder if perhaps I overuse exclamation marks, parenthesis, and/or emoticons and slash marks.)  Perhaps I should utilize a semi-colon or two instead of allowing fragments to “pepper” my work.  ;)  Ha!  (Sorry.)

What are your irritants?  Using quotations marks to connote irony?  Misplaced apostrophes?  Colons?  Dashes?  Hyphens used as dashes?  This is your moment to vent, my friends.  And, don’t worry if you use incorrect punctuation – I’m sure someone will be happy to correct you.