Punctuation Day was established by Jeff Rubin, founder of the day and organizer of www.nationalpunctuationday.com

Punctuation Day was established to help reinforce these lessons we learned in elementary school, and to reinforce their use and to show just how important they can be to ensure that what you write is properly interpreted as what you mean.

Our last week’s poetry contest brought in some fresh perspectives on punctuation!

Read on… and when you’re done, circle off the punctuation errors you can find in the newspaper today.

Here are the winners of the last weekly contest. (Top Three first)

Congratulations to all the winners and a sincere thank you to all the participants!

⁣

capoojakabra

As I saunter in the labyrinth of life
I find myself engulfed with many question marks
Whenever a decision has to be taken
The outcome decides whether it should be
ended with full stop or exclamation.
But there can be commas too
Always be prepared to fill the blanks
Then only hard work shines like a star

authorvibhutibhandarkar

If we writers built a nation,
We would call it punctuation.
Neatly planned between quote marks,
Not a single pen living in the dark.
With leaders who would pause in time,
To let the people speak their mind.
Every step a reminder of the importance of education,
Founded on good, true words – one nation. Period.

vaiju.panchal

Take note, don’t go rouge on grammar,
Use punctuation, or it could lead to a disaster!
Especially when you are dealing with children,
and you don’t want to be labeled a monster,
Just suppose, ‘We will now cut and paste kids’,
is written on the blackboard during craft class,
your words and actions might be misconstrued,
for a person who lacks education and is crass.

anamika.agarwal.33483

Punctuation is the essence of beautiful writing.
It’s not easy to decipher the meaning without it.
Likewise, put punctuation to your thoughts too.
Put a full stop on the negative thoughts,
Which will give space to a new and positive one.
Always put a question mark before presenting your thoughts,
To assess the fruitfulness of the same.
Punctuation is always better to put beforehand, instead of regretting later.

jan_the_rhapsodist

We need these traffic signals as we write,
to be interpreted right as one does read,
imagine meanings that’s so much a mess,
punctuations in internet never is stressed.
Nothing is more heavily indulged or codified,
than a comma, exclamation, colon or quotes,
em-dash and en-dashes are needed too,
along with humblest, period at the end.

toadercarmen68

This is not a plea
For things that are not said
And not for mercy,
Because I am tired of her.
I jumped into the fire,
Knowing that my heart has stopped.
I continued the pact
With tobacco addiction and punctuation.

the.agathist

I have collected our memories on paper.
In every verse I write, you breathe.
On every comma I trace your smile,
While I place my hopes on the ellipsis…  
I fall for the genre in your eyes
deeper and deeper, as I read you more
The prose keeps turning into poetry
and words keep softening their core!

jan_the_rhapsodist

I random stop to take a breath,
at times pause to rest and sigh,
a coma i apply in the former case,
full stop, period if latter beckons.
Mark my lines with double quotes,
when i wish to be strongly heard,
and i know that in anglosphere,
exclamations, question marks not absurd.

the_vague_diaries

When I sit down to write any of my words⁣
My words bereave me,
abandoning me like no one else⁣
⁣But i still hang on, I desperately do strive⁣
To catch hold of some, whatever i wish to try⁣
⁣The words and the verses in my rhymes and my proses⁣
Don’t mind my punctuations,
‘coz hey… I was never perfect!

gowristoryteller

Punctuations- they have boggled me for long,
Phew! It’s time I sing the unheard song.
Periods. They declare a forced stop,
The commas, separate and give words a pause,
Exclamations! They are so expressive,
Colons:  semicolons; Dude, you guys are so confusing,
“Quotes”, the most talkative of the lot,
Here’s my question… Why is English so confusing??

makinde_kehinde_margret

Clarify me with the question mark
What good is a full stop in revolving worlds?
Comma, semicolon and colon resonate with me
Yet, only a side of my infinite dimensions
Enclosed passion are brackets of my acclamation
I wonder in dash of mysticism and hyphen of magic
Revolving round parentheses of sensual fantasies
Embracing worlds of apostrophic ellipsis to come.

the1pinkpepper

No comma can separate us anymore,
The unspoken ellipsis…we fill in with our sweet nothings
We slash the stars from the heavens/drop them in our glass jars
We underline the orbit for tonight the Pink moon will be ours
We ignite the icy heart of Eris with caramelized quotations of our love’s cadence
Oh! our amorous exclamations reverberate through the galaxy
I write our hyphenated names on your bare heart
And find comfort in your loving em({braces})

authorvibhutibhandarkar

If we writers built a nation,
We would call it punctuation.
Neatly planned between quote marks,
Not a single pen living in the dark.
With leaders who would pause in time,
To let the people speak their mind.
Every step a reminder of the importance of education,
Founded on good, true words – one nation. Period.

zene_ash

An exclamation of weirdness,
browsing words to put in,
I saw different punctuations flashing on his face
at just a fleeting glance.
All my verses were penned for him,
but he put question marks instead,
unnecessary commas and spaces,
and then easily ceased with a full stop.

kirti_santosh

Safety was unheard of
In the speeding rage of words.
Then came the tiny cops,
Who ensured to reduce the speed a lot.
They made the words stop, think and proceed,
And sometimes squeal in excitement too.
These cute cops beautified each sentence
And are called the Punctuations.

enviable_journey

Do you realize that absence of exclamations, fullstops or commas can make us holler and haw,
Let’s eat, grandpa ..without the all important comma alters to a frightening- let’s eat grandpa(w)!
Punctuation can potentially save lives;
Without them, the sentences into bizarre nosedive.
Colons and semi colons with their puny dots and little squiggly lines,
Separate a sentence and its meaning define!
Without punctuation our writing would be as pointless as a gun without a trigger,
The written words will read like some monkey chatter and indecipherable gibber!

poets.inn_poetry

You were as important as a punctuation!
The only way my life seemed a sense-ation!
But I placed you wrong
And you changed the meaning of my prose…
I thought I would have a better hold on you in a poetry,
There you changed my meter!
Turned out to be a cheater, denying everything that we-were!

vedansh_r_r

City’s life makes mind anxious.
Solace is felt in the lap of a mountain,
Making the experience to be caught in a canvass.
Wanna feel cold dazzling breeze, under those greens leaf filled trees.
Where i lay to hault tedious life temporarily like a punctuation,
Making heart and soul lively again.
Why this blessed feel is not in the city?
Oh dear mountain will be revisiting, to brew this dream again and again

shan.ar24209

This is a poem about punctuations
And I don’t know what to write.
For English is language foreign to me,
My mother tongue being ‘Tamil’!
My schooling medium was English –
Thus I learned the language.
We were instructed by our teachers;
Speak or else it is going to be tough!

debashreebasak

Breaking the pace of words, a comma renders emotions to words
Augmenting the buoyancy, ebullience, an exclamation mark renders vivacity to words.
Shhh… safely guarding a secret or signifying a cheeky pun, a parenthesis renders clarity to words
Conflating umpteen thoughts or expressions, a semi-colon renders vivid imagery to words.
Putting an end to all the apprehensions, a period amicably ends it all.
Come what may, punctuations are the soul
These miniscule sticklers, help attain a writer’s goal
To communicate with the readers, sans any mole.

suveerabellary

Without them, incomplete is your poetry or prose
Full stop you need for a sentence to close
Commas come in handy when making a list
In conversation, quotation marks assist
Without a question mark, how will you ask?
Learning the art of right punctuation is an arduous task
Wrong use and everything goes for a toss
Want to be a writer, then master the art otherwise you will be at a loss.

stories_by_vandy

It must be eons back when paper and pen once bonded together and gave birth to words.
These words sat idle without much purpose until one day to some genius it must strike to join them together in a way to make them sound right.
But now the sentences ran unbridled, uncontrolled till the punctuation marks came like fourteen good cops to play their much needed role.
Finally, the family of words knew when to ask, when to pause or when to stop. Punctuation brought with them discipline and clarity of thought.

nk_writings99

Sometimes, life turns a question mark without any alliteration,
Exclaiming no exclamation for any explanations,
Running with cautions, commas expelled all the phase.
There was no fault to cover up the dash,
Full stops to the road was at excavation,
Transforming the world to serve another chance of mistake by applying an apostrophe avoiding a catastrophe,
Inverted commas commanded to switch on the same train with an extra bracket,
So that your jacket or cloak gets well trained to even jump over parathesis without tripping again.

solitude_obzerved

Written memoirs of past
Prevail on the percept of the present.
Engraved words permanent.
Albeit the meanings have changed.
Affirmations undone, less assertive.
Roles been emoted out of ethics of expressions.
Fates of feels gone lost , abrasion.
Nothing to be blamed.
Probably just a twisted tale of punctuation.

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Happy WriteFluencing!

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