Welcome to the nerd edition of pick-up lines!

It naturally follows that we should have some dating advice since we’re spending so much time at the bar lately with all our grammar jokes. I hope you’ve all been enjoying your cocktails, despite the fact that the company can be rather awkward. Grammarians are good people. Stick around.

Did you know? There are different types of punctuators out there in this crazy world. I honestly can’t say that I knew, but it’s actually quite intuitive once you read a snippet about each type.

Let’s take a little quiz that I’m making up on the spot (so you can have full confidence it’s been fully vetted and provides uncannily accurate results).

Quiz

1)    Do you use punctuation in your writing?

A)    Whatarey outalk ingabou tI hav enoideaw hatyo uretal kingabo utnicet ry

B)    Yes, punctuation is unfortunately necessary to use in order to be understood and taken seriously.

C)    Yes! In fact, I, often—find myself—over-punctuating, almost; everything because commas, are my friends? I said, “my friends!”!

2)    When you are asked to check over text someone else has written, how do you decide when and where to place punctuation marks?

A)    I pretty much do it by ear. If it sounds right, it is 99% right.

B)    I eyeball it. I just make sure the sentences aren’t either so sparse they look neglected, or, so cluttered up with punctuation that they’re hard to read.

C)    I married the Chicago Manual of Style, 17th edition, and I’m planning to spawn Stylettes in the next 3-5 years.

3)    Rules for grammar in writing are:

A)    There for a reason. Learn them. Follow them. It won’t kill you.

B)    Only applicable if they serve an actual purpose and make sense to me.

C)    For chumps. In other words, meant to be broken. Just call me E.E. Cummings.

4)    Take this sentence from Moby Dick. “There is no steady unretracting progress in this life; we do not advance through fixed gradations, and at the last one pause: through infancy’s unconscious spell, boyhood’s thoughtless faith, adolescence’ doubt (the common doom), then skepticism, then disbelief, resting at last in manhood’s pondering repose of If.” What do you want to do to it?

A)    Leave it. It’s beautifully expressed and in perfectly acceptable grammatical condition. Herman Melville knew what was up.

B)    Break it into different sentences so it’s less of a giant run-on and more coherent.

C)    I dunno, what does that even mean???

5)    Your boss has a memo going out to your entire department. He asks you if you put the period inside the parentheses or outside. You:

A)    Laugh at him. Politely, of course. Because who cares?

B)    Go with your gut. Inside. Always inside.

C)    Google until you find a reputable answer on the inter-webs and go back to him with your answer.

Quiz Explained

1)    So yes, we all poop. We all punctuate. Otherwise, you get some pretty jumbled stuff (A). And while it can be amusing, it’d also get old real quick. There’s only so far a decoder ring can take you.

So the question is, do you tend to under-punctuate, punctuate about-right (B), or over-punctuate (C)? Are commas your friends? Enemies? Necessary? Used as sparsely as garlic on a first date?

2)    There are three main types of punctuation personalities. And while you may be a mix (like many of us), we typically have a dominant type. If you answered…, you are a … :

A)    Aural punctuators hear punctuation. They read aloud (or aloud in their heads) according to how the text would be spoken, and they add in punctuation to denote pauses, questions, exclamations, rhythm, etc. They almost treat a text like music: a comma denotes a one-beat pause, a colon two, a period a full measure rest, etc.

B)    Visual punctuators are most concerned with how their sentences look. Do sentences look neat and tidy so they can be easily read, or are they cluttered with extraneous punctuation that winds up detracting from the experience and the meaning? Is there so little punctuation that a reader may be confused, distracted, and ultimately misinterpret meaning? Would the em dash offset look more dramatic—in this case—then just mere commas?

C)    Analytical punctuators use grammatical and syntactical units to determine where punctuation goes and which type. They know the basic rules of grammar, but they’re not necessarily digging through the 10,000-page style manuals for the exact use for each and every comma. They apply principles according to the rules that govern these grammatical and syntactical units.

3)    If you answered… your punctuation type is…

A) You’re likely an analytical punctuator at heart. Even if you don’t have all the rules in your pocket.

B) An aural or visual punctuator.

C) An idiosyncratic punctuator. A free-spirit. You likely combine pieces of each (aural, visual, and analytical).

4)    Oh, Herman. Herman Melville wrote Moby Dick 168 years ago in 1851. Yeah. There was a punctuation style back then (eighteenth and nineteenth centuries) that was commonly adhered to. Then it just was what it was. We’ve since dubbed it close punctuation. Collins dictionary defines it simply as “punctuation characterized by the use of many commas and other marks.” A micro example of this might be “5 o’clock p.m.” versus “5pm”. “Dear Sir:” vs. “Dear Sir”. The New Yorker magazine is apparently a comma proliferator and uses a more “close punctuation” style than almost all other magazines or newspapers. For 54 years, they had the notorious Eleanor Gould as their chief grammarian—look her up.

The opposite, is an open punctuation style. It can be described as a more minimalist approach to punctuating (commas especially). Its catchphrase is “when in doubt, leave it out.” But, that does not apply to places where commas are grammatically essential. Go light, but don’t get crazy. Rules are rules.

If you answered A) good for you. You’re and old-soul poet at heart. If you answered B), you’re in the norm (or you felt lame answering C). If you answered C) you’re not alone. It’s still a little hard to believe they make you read that at like 14 years-old?!

What Melville was apparently going for: “weav[ing] the stages of human life into one long, carefully punctuated sentence.” If you go back and read the quote in the quiz with this in mind, you can acknowledge the art to it. And you could see how chopping it into multiple short sentences kind of defeats his original purpose.

5)    If you answered…

A) I get it. In the grand scheme of thing, a misplaced period is not the end of the world.

B) Gut is good, but there is a rule. (Shocking, I know.) If you’ve got a parenthetical remark within a sentence, the period goes outside the closing parentheses. If the entire sentence exists within the parentheses, then guess what? The period goes inside the closing parentheses.

• I think she’s really crazy (deep in my soul).

• (Deep in my soul, I think she’s really crazy.)

C) This is probably your best bet. You’d likely find the rule above.

So… what’s your punctuation type?

I’m a Capricorn. I do love walks on the beach (and I wish Colorado had some)! And I’d say my gut style is aural, but I double check with analytical. I’ve recently gotten remarried to the Chicago Manual of Style, 17th edition. So, while I do regard the ear as a valuable tool in editing, I’m consciously shifting back to a more solid analytical approach… because professionalism.

Final caveat. There are clear-cut rules, but, writers also have discretion. Science and art. Art and science. Some of the best advice out there is that you’ve got to know the rules in order to break them.

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Reference note: This post relies on chapter 4 of Amy Einsohn & Marilyn Schwartz’s The Copyeditor’s Handbook, 4th ed. (University of California Press, 2019) for the punctuation style (open and close), punctuator type (aural, visual, idiosyncratic), and Moby Dick selection and analysis.