PUNCTUATION, LOUD AND CLEAR 

IN A REVIEW OF FLORENCE HAZRAT’S On the Mark: From Periods to Interrobangs, How Punctuation Remade the World, Judith Shulevitz writes “Punctuation: A Generational Divide,” The Atlantic, August 2026. Indeed, Judith transforms this into a familial matter between her and her son, “the family authority on punctuation.”

My own votes, you’ll find in the following tidbits, are on Judith’s side. See also “Can That Be Presidential‽,” SimanaitisSays, October 18, 2017; and “Four Adjectives in Search of a Typographer,” SimanaitisSays, November 25, 2018. 

Where Commas and Periods Go To Die. Her son’s expertise, Shulevitz says, “lies in using it in texts and on social media, where commas and periods go to die. Semicolons too, decades after Kurt Vonnegut tried to banish them. ‘First rule: Do not use semicolons,’ he pronounced in 2005. ‘All they do is show you’ve been to college.’” 

Emojis Thrive. Shulevitz continues, “Exclamation points and emoji reign supreme. (Does an emoji count as punctuation or rate as a paralinguistic element—that is, a relative of a wink or an eye roll? My son shrugs.) Online punctuation is for torquing emotion, he told me, not for making yourself clear: ‘The ultimate goal is not efficiency but maximum attention.’ ”

Sorta like ALL CAPS? Not to disparage any particular user.

I love the cover graphics; evidently Hazrat has been to 🎓. Indeed, she has a Ph.D. in English Literature from the University of St. Andrews.

Gun Rights and Commas. Shulevitz recounts, “Take the one-sentence Second Amendment, whose commas have been responsible for a great deal of trouble: ‘A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.’ Until the 21st century, all parts of the amendment were given equal weight regardless of commas, so that the gun rights granted in its second half were limited to the militias referred to in the first half. In 2008, however, Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia affirmed an unusual interpretation that used a comma to downplay the clause about militias, leaving ‘the people’ with an individual right to bear arms.”

A Telling Poke in the Eye of Originalism. “But the eminent originalist—of all people!—failed to acknowledge an important historical fact,” Shulevitz relates. “The version of the amendment on which Scalia based his reading, found in the National Archives, is only one among many. ‘Each state ratified a different version of this amendment,’ Hazrat writes, ‘some with two, some with three, and some with four commas.’ Punctuation was not standardized in the Founders’ time, so the best course of action, she says, is not to read too much into those commas.”

See also “Thoughts on Originalism,” SimanaitisSays, June 28, 2024.

Rules Are Still Evolving. “Indeed,” Shulevitz observes, “thanks to the advent of technologies that have us typing more and more, the rules have been hyper-evolving. Marks do more than fit parts of a sentence together; they re-create the pace, emphasis, and tone of voice that we rely on to make our meaning plain when we talk in person or by phone. Now that we can react to a friend’s needy text or an enemy’s infuriating post in real time and with minimal reflection, we need reliable substitutes for extraverbal cues more than ever.”

“But,” Shulevitz continues, “if online punctuation is about maximum attention rather than mutual comprehension, and is mutating so rapidly, you have to wonder about the future of communication.” 

Indeed, here’s the cover of The Atlantic, August 2026.

Calling Your Full Name. “To digital natives,” Shulevitz observes, “periods at the end of text messages signify passive-aggressiveness. They’re ‘the texting equivalent of your mother calling your full name,’ the Gen Z language expert Adam Aleksic, who goes by Etymology Nerd, explained in a 2024 TikTok. Except it’s not that simple: My son and his friends do sometimes end texts with periods—to convey faux disapproval. ‘Correct punctuation itself is a signal of irony,’ he told me.”

How Best to Signal Irony? “The quest to punctuate irony,” Shulevitz recounts, “goes back to at least the late 16th century, when a printer proposed a backward-facing question mark. A scientist later suggested using the upside-down exclamation point. Nothing stuck. A 20th-century French novelist suggested the Greek letter psi—Ψ. It looked fittingly like an arrow in the air. (‘Irony stings,’ Hazrat comments.)”

Ha. But how many people understand what irony isΨ 

I’ve learned from the best examples: See “Ironic, Sardonic, Satiric—Adjectives For Our Times,” SimanaitisSays, November 24, 2018. And thanks, Judith Shulevitz, Florence Hazrat, and The Atlantic for enhancing my understanding. ds

© Dennis Simanaitis, SimanaitisSays.com, 2026