a pet peeve

Like most of us, I have a lot of minor pet peeves that just kind of bug me when I see/hear them. I'm a generally positive person, so I'm able to let the majority of these slide with the understanding that I have little room to talk - I know I do lots of little things that are also pet peeves of other people. But there are a few things that really just get under my skin and make me want to scream.

Refusing to use punctuation is the one that's got me steamed up today.

I am not even a grammar queen. I used to be (having been raised by a fantastic English teacher) but even that has taken a backwards slide in the last few years (as have most of my too-perfectionistic driven tendencies.) I probably say and write things incorrectly about a thousand times a day. Oh well.

But people, use punctuation!! Periods, commas, exclamation points, question marks, semicolons! They are beautiful things! And needless to say, whether you are writing on a message board or sending an email or leaving a note, you tend to appear rude or careless or haughty when you refuse to use even the tiniest little PERIOD. PERIOD!!

It's hard enough to guess at the inflection your electronic writing is supposed to be getting across even when you do use punctuation. So please, for the love of all that is decent English, please please please use all those fun little symbols that tell us where your thoughts begin and end. If you're not writing poetry, sending a text message, or labeling boxes, there is really no excuse.

But then, that's just me.

Ugh, my apologies. Can you tell I've had a few to many deadpan notes jotted to me this week?!