by Trina Boice
www.TrinaBoice.com
Did you know that September 24th has officially been declared as a
celebration of the lowly comma, correctly used quotation marks, and other
proper uses of periods, semicolons, and the ever-mysterious ellipsis?
Well, now you do, so let the party begin!#$?!
Our words, both spoken and verbal, really affect our brand and how others
perceive us.
The ninth annual
National Punctuation Day®, the September 24 holiday that
reminds
America
that a semicolon is not a surgical procedure, will celebrate the 2012
presidential election with a literary challenge — vote for your favorite
Presidential Punctuation Mark in one, highly punctuated paragraph!
The rules: Write one paragraph with a maximum of three sentences using the
following 13 punctuation marks to explain which should be “presidential,” and
why: apostrophe, brackets, colon, comma, dash, ellipsis, exclamation point,
hyphen, parentheses, period, question mark, quotation mark, and semicolon. You
may use a punctuation mark more than once, and there is no word limit. Multiple
entries are permitted.
In short, persuade them that your favorite punctuation mark should be the
official punctuation mark of the President of the
United States. Contest
entries must be received by September 30 to be considered for prizes. The
winner(s) will receive a box of punctuation goodies, including a National
Punctuation Day
® T-shirt. Send entries, including
name, address and phone number, to National Punctuation Day® headquarters at
Jeff@NationalPunctuationDay.com.
In 2011, 220 entries in their paragraph contest were received from the
United States, the
Netherlands,
Malta,
Canada,
England,
and
India.
In 2010, 356 people from the
United States,
Canada, the
United Kingdom,
France,
the
Netherlands,
Japan,
Australia,
New Zealand, and
Italy (in Italian!) submitted more than 3,000
entries in our haiku contest, including 73 from a certain
New York State
employee who shall remain nameless.
Have a great punctuation day!
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