Punctuation Alignment Chart
How well do you know your punctuation marks? Can they ever truly be trusted? Which ones are here to help you and which ones will stab you in the back at the first opportunity?
In honor of National Grammar Day, I present to you the Punctuation Alignment Chart. Choose your fighter.
Lawful Good – Semicolon
The semicolon doesn’t give a fuck if you think it’s confusing or just a fancy comma. It knows what’s right and what’s wrong. And unlike the vast majority of humans walking around these days, semicolons have a purpose—more than one, actually.
Semicolons connect independent clauses, clarify serial lists, replace conjunctions, and enable conjunctive adverbs like a goddamned champ and won’t even blink when your dumb ass just says “fuck it” and uses a comma anyway.
Neutral Good – Parentheses
Parentheses are just trying to help you fuck things up as little as possible. They know it’s going to happen, but like a good friend helping you through your fourth downward spiral in the past ten years, they’re here to get you where you need to be—even if you destroy the lives of everyone around you in the process.
Parentheses are perfect for adding, highlighting, and setting off information that’s not grammatically necessary to the rest of the sentence. Kind of like how your parents talk about your weird cousin. He’s technically part of the family, but he’s not an integral part.
Chaotic Good – em dash, en dash, hyphen
Who knew a few pixels/centimeters could change the meaning of a simple dash on such a seismic scale? Great power resides within these horizontal anti-heroes but too few know how to properly wield them.
Spoiler alert: you’re using the hyphen for shit that’s way beyond its pay grade. When you’re ready to start crafting sentences that make people feel all tingly in their nether regions, give the em dash and en dash a booty call. They always answer.
Lawful Neutral – Period
Unless you’re trying to be a cheeky little shit who’s adding some stylistic flair (like I’m about to) or just intentionally being a dick, it’s almost impossible to misuse the period.
Why? Because the period signals the end of a declarative sentence. That’s it. There is no other use. Full stop. End of story. Say no more. Done. Over. Finished. The period is the undefeated champion of shutting that shit down.
True Neutral – Question Mark
How can a punctuation mark be so easy to use yet so inherently untrustworthy? I mean, it looks like a shrugging exclamation mark and its purpose is to open Pandora’s Box. Not now, question mark. I don’t want to justify my poor life choices.
The question mark designates or implies a direct question and it couldn’t care less about how badly it fucks your shit up.
Chaotic Neutral – Ellipsis
We’ve all seen it, we all hate it: those three little dots when you’re waiting for someone to respond but the text never comes. They just sit there like a monument to your social anxiety as you run through all the scenarios of why the person on the other end simply refuses to write something back.
The ellipsis is a precarious punctuation with some useful applications, but it’s generally apathetic toward whether or not people use it 100% correctly. “Did the writer get close enough? That’ll do, now fuck off and let me get back to binging my shows.”
Lawful Evil – Colon
A select few know how to properly use the colon. The rest of you only use it when you have no idea how to get from Sentence A to Random Thought B, so you just say “here’s a fucking colon; it’s your problem now.”
Colons are for introducing lists, calling out a series, or highlighting information. Stop sticking colons where they don’t belong. They’re not your toys. Are you thinking about something other than punctuation right now? Good. My work is done here.
Neutral Evil – Exclamation
The exclamation mark is like that overly positive/energic person who, even though you don’t have a single shred of evidence, you’re 100% convinced is a serial killer. Nobody acts like that all the time. What are you hiding?
It’s not even the exclamation mark’s fault. They’re supposed to convey excitement and emotion, but you dickbags just keep chucking them into every stupid text and email you send and that’s reason 372 why I have trust issues.
Chaotic Evil – Comma
There are so many uses for the comma that nobody knows the rules anymore. You all just make it up as you go and there’s nothing I can do to stop you. You’re like pirates on PCP and, apparently, somebody’s giving out prizes for reckless assclownery.
The comma was designed to act as a natural pause between words, thoughts, or ideas—and generally bring order to complex sentences—but then people just started using it for everything and now it barely means anything.