The Punctuation Marks of Life
I’m a word nerd. I admit it. I recently bought the new edition of the Elements of Style not only because the clever artwork on the cover caught my eye, but also because I love the writing in it. I anticipate May like Christmas every year because it’s the release of the updated AP Stylebook. My reading stack at home includes books like Edit Yourself; Naked, Drunk and Writing; Woe is I; Bird by Bird; Writing Down the Bones; and Eat Shoots and Leaves. I’m really proud of the fact my 11th grade grammar book still has a place on my bookshelf. So it isn’t surprising that I sometimes find myself seeing life as a series of punctuation marks. Take a look at a few examples: Parentheses – Sets words off from the rest of the sentence with the intention of giving additional detail or meaning. The sentence might make grammatical sense without the words in parentheses, but those words help the reader understand something better. A parentheses inserted into life is a time set off to gain mea