Today is National Punctuation Day! This new holiday was originally celebrated on August 22, the birthday of the founder Jeff Rubin. Rubin wanted a date that he could easily remember, but he changed the date two years later to September 24 so that it landed after the beginning of the school year. He wanted to remind educators to teach students that punctuation matters.
Rubin, a former reporter, would get frustrated at errors he would spot in news articles. He said, “I would sit at the kitchen table with my red Sharpie … screaming obscenities, which would upset my wife. She encouraged me to find another outlet for my aggravation.” (Source: CNN) As a result, in 2004 he secured a listing for National Punctuation Day in the Chase’s Calendar of Events.
NationalPunctuationDay.com has a list of how to celebrate the day, including letting yourself sleep late, circling punctuation errors (or possible errors you aren’t sure about) with a red pen in the newspaper, purchasing a copy of Strunk & White’s The Elements of Style and using it to research the errors you found earlier, congratulating yourself on becoming a better communicator, and then more sleeping. Thankfully, today is Sunday. It may be too late to sleep in, but you can still grab the Sunday paper and your red pen—celebrate National Punctuation Day!
Best,
Rita Ray