punctuation education

Since I began blogging and reading the blogs of others, I’ve discovered just how entertaining the little quirks of the English language can be. I think there should be a beginning blogger’s manual to take advantage of some of these quirks. It would sound something like this:

Bolding a word can give it emphasis; as opposed to the method of typing in all CAPITALS, bolding conveys more serious or intriguing importance, rather than being the typographical equivalent of YELLING.

Italics: They’re no longer just for titles of books. In my experience, italics come in handy when posting a poem or passage of someone else’s, or a foreign phrase.

Ellipse… These are useful when conveying a deep thought or unresolved opinion, in order to leave the reader with a sense of pondering. They’re also great when you can think of a great beginning for a sentence but don’t really know how to finish it properly…

“Quotation marks”. This is a wonderfully simple punctuation trick. You can put quotes around “anything” and readers will automatically “wonder” what you’re trying to “imply”.

TyPiNg LiKe ThIs: I actually have no idea what this technique is used for, other than annoying the reader.

Emoticons: These interesting ^_^ little faces can convey a variety of emotions like anger >:-( , happiness ;P or even a queasy stomach :$.

The Dash - the typgraphical equivalent of a dramatic pause or flourish - Voila!