May 01st, 2024

Fears and phobias and dreads, oh my!  We all have them.  Everybody has something that is, to them, if not downright scary, at least makes them uncomfortable.

Maybe it's a fear of heights, that is a very common one.  Perhaps crowds make you feel a little unsettled.  Or Spiders?  Snakes?  The darkness?  Water?  Whatever you particular fear is, I get it.  I sympathize with how it makes you feel and I understand.  I would never dismiss how you feel, I would never just tell you to "get over it" or whine about how inconvenient your phobia is for me.    All things, by the way, that at one time or another have been done to me.    Even if I don't completely understand why you are afraid, I would accept it as true. 

I said that with such confidence didn't I?   And I absolutely, truly, sincerely mean every word of it.  Or at least I did until recently.

Strange things come into my feed online and a short time ago a little video popped up with a youngish person (I'd say mid 20's) with an engaging smile.  He gazed very comfortably into the camera and then said, with no hesitation that he didn't understand why "old people" had an obsession with punctuation.   "Old People" use it all the time, even in texts!  He was clearly baffled by this phenomenon.   He finished up by saying that he didn't understand punctuastion and that he was, frankly, terrified by it.

Terrified.  By Punctuation.  Really?  


Well at first I just assumed (though one should never) that perhaps he wasn't properly introduced to the concept of punctuation in school and that he was describing it as being terrifying as an exaggeration just for the sake of impact in his video.  But out of curiousity I googled it and did a YouTube search and sonuvagun!  He is not the only young person who is afraid of punctuation and Confused by our (our being us old folk) insistence on using it.  It  seems as if this  fear, or at least discomfort, is a thing now.

My initial answer to the Why of it all (why do you use punctuation?) is.....for clarity!  It's all about communication!  Communication, the clear and unmistakable exchange of thoughts, ideas, requests, comments etc. is key to every single relationship you will ever have.  To break it down further,  there is a huge difference between:

1) Let's eat, Grandma

and

2) Let's eat Grandma.

And just in case you didn't understand that difference (which breaks my heart)  Number 1 is an invitation to Grandma requesting that she join them for a meal.  Number 2 suggests strongly that Grandma is the meal, or at least the entree.    

Big Difference.  That's why we use punctuation.

But it seems, according to these articles which primarily are in the form  of videos, punctuation comes off as being "hostile".  Which is the opposite of proper communication.    When I write and use punctuation and yes even in my emails and texts, I absolutely use punctuation.  A properly placed comma can mean the difference between   a dinner guest or a guest as dinner.  Wow.  Wow.  Wow.  Wow.

Hostile and Frightening.  Well, I know that often we are frightened of things we don't understand and that fear can cause people to be defensive which can present itself as hostility.  Could it be that these young people were never taught how to use punctuation?  I know that nobody teaches Sentence Diagramming anymore which is a dang shame.  It's the difference between understanding how a combustion engine works and knowing how to rebuild a combustion engine.  And further, it explains a LOT of the writing I see nowadays.

Oh I cannot just blame the current batch of younger people.  Understanding how to properly communicate via the written word began falling apart even when I was in school.  Even when I was in college I noticed it.  One of the things I did in my college years, to earn a few bucks here and there, was to help people with their term papers.  One very nice and honestly very smart young fellow, for instance, asked me to look over a paper for him.  The very first sentence stopped me in my tracks.  I said, "Oh dear, this first line here, which ought to be your topic sentence, isn't even an actual sentence and is, instead, more of a phrase. "  His response was, "Of course it's a sentence...see? There is a period at the end."  And in his mind, that was the definition of a sentence.  When I explained that a sentence requires both a noun and a verb, (or subject and predicate)  he looked at me blankly.  Another wow.  He could tell me a million or so things about his subject and he knew his topic inside and out.  He just had no idea how to write it down in a way that everyone who read it also understood his topic.  Wow again.

So I suppose it started a long time ago and it's only continued it's long downhill slide until here we sit, punctuation-less, attempting to desperately communicate.

I'm not a good texter anyway.  I have no idea how other people fly though texting. It takes me forever, I hit the wrong dang buttons, have to go back and correct my spelling and still, thanks largely to an over-eager and often incorrect, auto correct, have to then send a follow up apologetic text to explain what I actually meant.

I do not use acronyms often and the only sorts of emoji's I utilize are smiley faces, sad faces, confused faces...anything face related.  I know that some people send texts that are soley comprised of emojis.  I do not even pretend to understand that.  Although if you are punctuation averse, I suppose it would be a draw.  I am guessing that a hieroglyphic text does not require punctuation.   Ancient Egyptians did not use punctuation in their written words.  But of course their civilization is now lost  to time.  Just sayin'  There is probably no connection there.

Anyway, I'm trying, really trying to understand this fear of punctuation.  By the way, I checked and there is currently no actual term for a punctuation phobia.  At least not yet.  Perhaps soon as it becomes more common.

I understand fear of bears, or flying, or even public speaking.  I can wrap my brain around fears of needles, fears of clowns and even the fear of fears.  But I'm not there yet with the fear of punctuation. I'm working on it.

Meanwhile, please note my liberal use of all sorts of punctuation in this post.  The way I see it, communication is difficult enough. Anything I can do to make myself clearer, my message more easily understood, I will do. Up to and including a period at the end of the sentence.  If that comes across as hostile, then obviously I am not communicating very well at all.  My apologies.