Happy National Punctuation Day!

Thank you to my copyeditor friend Brandy for this one:

With all the breaking news out there — Clay Aiken, Lindsay Lohan, Abe Vigoda — I’d hate for a story to get lost. And National Punctuation Day is just that kind of story.

For most people, punctuation is an irritant: a misused collection of periods, commas, virgules, question marks and exclamation points that is thrown, willy-nilly, into an e-mail or text message. But for some of us, punctuation is an overlooked treasure. Without punctuation, a declaration turns into a question. Without punctuation, sentences run endlessly until they bump into the next page. Without (correct) punctuation, Canada’s Rogers Communications may not have lost more than $2 million.

So, celebrate the semicolon. Offer hosannas for hyphens. Pay attention to asterisks. National Punctuation Day only comes around once a year — and that day calls for more than one exclamation point!!!

OK, maybe not.

– Todd Leopold, CNN.com Entertainment Producer

P.S. Any errors made in the previous are the fault of my copy editor.