I love punctuation.

anyone who knows me knows (and likely mocks) my love for all things related to organizing. especially command hooks. and checklists.

but a pet peeve of mine is improper use of commas. obviously, I don't promote using correct grammar 100% of the time, particularly in creative writing. grammar and punctuation, like most things in life, are malleable once you understand them. but in the non-creative writing side of life, knowing how to use proper grammar is really, really important. plus, spellcheck never seems to fix punctuation mistakes. of all the grammar in the world, punctuation is truly my favorite part. it is the foundation for organizing all the words we use, and it tells us how to read everything we see.

in spanish, you use a question mark or exclamation mark at the beginning of question or exclamatory sentences, so you know what you're getting into ahead of time. ¡what a great idea!

when you read, something that seems to have random commas everywhere it is difficult to understand but it is even harder when people forget commas. see? the worst. did you have to read that twice to understand it? I did, and I wrote it.

here are some examples from wikipedia: "woman, without her man, is nothing" and "woman: without her, man is nothing" have greatly different meanings, as do "eats shoots and leaves" and "eats, shoots and leaves". "King Charles walked and talked half an hour after his head was cut off" is alarming; "King Charles walked and talked; half an hour after, his head was cut off", less so