A friend of mine once admitted to being obsessed with dashes. She said it like she was admitting to a clandestine affair–bashfully yet boldly: “I LOVE the dash.”
When she said that, I felt a pang of jealousy. For I, too, love the dash, and I am not good at sharing things I love.
Perhaps you, too, adore a particular piece of punctuation: the workhorse comma, the sophisticated semicolon, the much-maligned interrobang. Author Leah Petersen (via) offers a humorous guide to what this favorite punctuation mark says about you:
Period (.): Type A personality. You are decisive and clear. You have no difficulty with setting limits. Often a stodgy person that no one else thinks is any fun to hang out with. You tend to be good with technology and have the latest gadgets.
Colon (:): You like things to be well-delineated. Much like the Period type, you like order. You make lists. People always know where they stand with you. You usually get asked to organize the office parties and school functions.
I’ll let you judge how accurate it is—excuse me, I’ve got to go correct someone’s grammar—
Further Reading:
- An ode to the use of the colon in prose
- For many, the apostrophe is the least favorite punctuation mark. Why one town banned it (and why there’s no apostrophe in “Fiction Writers Review”)
