Fun With Punctuation

If you feel like being very disturbed, go rent the Korean film "Oldboy." It's a hell of a movie but not suited for those who offend or disgust easily. I can't really say much about it without ruining the movie for you. All I will say is that my mom wouldn't like it, but my dad would. It's one of those films. For those of you who don't like the edgy movies, I recommend "Dodgeball." A great underdog story staring the ever-so-charming Vince Vaughn and Ben Stiller in his best role since "Zoolander." I was pleasantly surprised with the quality of this feel good comedy, and Rip Torn had some priceless one-liners.

I'm not sure I'm using the hyphen properly. It's one of those things that I never really paid attention to in class and am suffering for now. Where does it go? Do I use it with "one-liners" as shown above or "ever-so-charming," or is it something that should be avoided in these situations. I pretty sure I'm using quotes properly though.

I'll tell you one person that doesn't use quotes properly, my old boss whose name will not be revealed. In her daily tirades about the lack of sharpies on the fifth floor or amount of napkins in the third floor kitchen, she would gesture around words with the annoying, two finger quote sign arbitrarily. She would say something like, "David, you 'need' to order paper for the 'second' floor 'copy room.'" I don't see a need for quotations around "need," "second," and "copy room," but apparently she thought it really got her point across. As if her condescending tone and the sheer stupidity of the task at hand wasn't enough to make me hate every moment of my life at that bank. I guess the moral of the story is to avoid any excessive form of punctuation unless you're absolutely positive it's necessary.

That's enough fun with punctuation for now. My seventh grade English teacher would be so proud of my interest in this subject. I should have her send out a copy of Werner's for me. Or is it Warner's... Now that I think of it she was the first person to encourage me to keep a journal while traveling (she made me do it for class when I missed a week to go to Australia). Consider this a thank you note to Mrs. Howard for leaving such an unsuspected and lasting impression on my life. I would have never guessed it when I was thirteen and angry at the world.