There’s a big lather about young folks finding the period offensive. The truth is, that’s for texting, and we old people text paragraphs while youngin’s text sentence fragments at a time, making end punctuation unnecessary.

It’s like the paragraph indent. The purpose of the indent is to visually indicate the start of a new paragraph . What this means is that the first paragraph of a chapter, section, or paper does not need to be indented because there is nothing preceding from which to set it apart. With that logic, if you text one sentence (or fragment) at a time, the end punctuation isn’t necessary.

The COMMA is far more important in my mind. The meme goes around:

“Let’s eat grandpa.”

“Let’s eat, grandpa.”

That comma is a matter of life and death to grandpa.

Let’s face it, the comma is far harder to master than periods. When do you use them, when don’ t you?

I found what I hope was a typo in the Reader’s Digest from the Life in the United States feature. “My husband, Rey, was…”

Made me wonder if this lady was from Utah.

It is proper for my wife to write, “My brother Tim is my twin.” It is not proper for me to write, “My sister Debbie is the oldest.” Lynette has one brother; I have three sisters. The comma indicates more than one. The absence of the comma means there is only one. So Rey, I guess, is one of two or more husbands the author has.

My favorite comma drops an m but is pronounced the same. The comet’s coma is the envelope around the nucleus of the comet.