A Word, Please:

Thursday was National Punctuation Day. It’s a time when punctuation lovers of all stripes set aside their differences and unite in celebration of those little marks that are the fine line shielding us from communication chaos.

True, different factions celebrate the holiday differently. Semicolon lovers sport their tightest girdles and spread tea-soaked mayhem in festivities that go on much, much longer than they should. Parentheses partisans plan simple affairs that invariably become over-complicated as they invite too many guests and insert too many ingredients in the dip.

Comma lovers’ somber celebrations require them to pause for a moment of silence, or two, or three. And don’t get me started on those exclamation-point types. (Why must they shout?)

Me, I’m a member of the Period Party. We shake hands. We say “Happy Punctuation Day.” Then we’re done.

I’m new to the party. I converted just a few years ago, breaking my lifelong ties with the dash faction. It’s not that I oppose dashes now.

I’ve just grown into a mellower approach to punctuation.

I used to take such pleasure in the way dashes let me abruptly change direction mid-sentence. Like, “Dash lovers can get away with — well, anything.” When you’re a dash lover, every sentence is your mosh pit.

How I loved that in my younger years. But as I grow wiser, I prefer to use dashes in moderation.

A dash is twice as long as a hyphen. In theory, it has a space on either side, even though many word-processing programs show it touching its neighbors. As NationalPunctuationDay. com explains, a dash can be used “to denote an abrupt change in thought in a sentence or an emphatic pause.”

You can also use a dash to insert a series within a phrase. “Devotees of inferior punctuation — Bracketeers, Apostrophiles and especially Semicolonites — know deep down that the Period Party is the one true path.” And, of course, dashes connect after-the-fact attributions like:

“‘My advice to writers just staring out? Don’t use semicolons.’ — Kurt Vonnegut”