Ah, the exclamation mark. Or point. Is it a mark or a point? As an editor I probably should know these things, but I don’t. I will have to ask my copy editor.
Anyways, this little bit of punctuation is the current bane of my existence. Why, you say? Am I editing web copy!!!!111!!!????
No, it’s Noah’s issue actually.
We have been reading Snuggle Puppy a lot. I think he longs for the at-home cookie-baking days of the past. And as anyone who has read this tome can testify, it has a lot of bright colours and letters and exclamation…. poinmarks.
And they bother Noah. Because he wants to know what SOUND they make. I told him they make things loud, and so, in true two year old style, now he requires that I read it like this:
Everything about you is especially fine! LOUD
I’m not sure what will happen when he notices the commas.
Reminds me of Victor Borge’s hilarious ‘Phonetic punctuation’ – hear a sample on http://www.kor.dk/borge/b-mus-1.htm or buy his CD ‘Live’.
Even if Noah doesn’t get it all, you’ll probably love it!
I absolutely love snuggle puppy and all the other Boynton books/cds. I give them as gift quite often (and have been caught more than once singing the songs with no child present!).
commas are easy….deep breath! now semi-colons: eek!
In some languages, they are also a clucking of the tongue, so it could be worse.
“You are a snuggly puppy!” *cluck*
“Snuggly puppies like to snuggle!!” *cluck cluck*
Now, imagine this:
OMG, like, WTFBBQ!!!111!!!oneoneone
The hell.
Also, many children could tell us what a colon sounds like. Loudly. I still can’t wrap my head around semi-colons.