Thread: Survey: What is the Best Punctuation Mark?

Intelligent Life, a The Economist magazine, is asking this question to their readers. Surprisingly, they've not included the question mark as default option (they only shortlisted the exclamation mark, the dash, the ampersand, the comma, the semi-colon and the ellipsis).

They have also asked a couple of well known authors to explain their answers, which is always interesting. Claire Messud's answer (the Semi-colon is great for people who tend to digress) inevitably made me think of Kurt Vonnegut's famous rant against that particular punctuation mark (“Here is a lesson in creative writing. First rule: Do not use semicolons. They are transvestite hermaphrodites representing absolutely nothing. All they do is show you've been to college.”)

You can vote here:
WHAT IS THE BEST PUNCTUATION MARK? | More Intelligent Life
... but remember to come back and let us know your thoughts!

I do not know what they mean by "the best", I think it is not "the most useful" because the majority voted for the semicolon and we know that the semicolon is very rarely used.

well, i'm sure it means your personal best, the one you derive the most pleasure from (if such a thing is possible, which i think it is!)

I think , comma is the best punctuation mark.

I´ve noticed the use of ... a lot these days. It appears that people use them for different reasons. It would be interesting to find out it´s correct use if there is one.

Here´s another doozy... Does the smiley face at the end of the sentence go before or after the period? Or do you just scrap the period all together?

Originally Posted by vicente

According to Vicente's Rules of Grammar that depends on whether the smiley face applies to the whole post, a paragraph or a sentence. If it is enclosed within a period, exclamation point or question mark it applies only to that sentence. If you put it at the end the last period of a phrase or paragraph it applies to that paragraph. If it is placed at the end of an entire post with one or more spaces separating it from the last sentence it applies to the entire post.

If it is used in place of a punctuation mark it is considered grammatically incorrect.

hahaha... I think we need to make Vicente's Rules of Grammar official.