Punctuation… who knew it could be such a nightmare? Just kidding, I totally knew. I work in an environment where I am often writing things that are going to be viewed by hundreds of people, and I agonize so many decisions.  I also work in an environment where I read hundreds of things that other people write, and I feel so much better about my aforementioned agonized decisions. I often end up asking myself, “Why?  Why did they not proof this?”  

One of my most agonized over questions was answered in this week’s punctuation guide.  When I am posting job openings at work, and the opening may be filled in one of several locations, I struggle with the best way to separate the locations.  I usually include a paragraph that goes something like, “Three positions to be filled at one of the following locations: 1111 Pencil Avenue, Philadelphia, PA; 123 Pen Street, Washington, DC; 742….”  

Even though I typically use commas in between the city and state and semicolons to separate the various items in the list, it has never sat right with me.  This is because I thought the semicolon was reserved for separating two potentially small sentences.  It was a relief to see that this method of using a semicolon to separate listed items already containing commas is perfectly acceptable. I have one less thing to agonize!

Normally I see examples of terrible punctuation everywhere. My manager ends every instant message she sends me in ellipses.  “Good morning…” she says. “Did you complete that vacancy…” But I was having trouble finding a specific example for this assignment. Finally I came across the blog below:

The first exclamation point was not placed at the end of a full sentence.