In the sixth grade, I had a dry-humored teacher by the name of Mr. Fisher, who once made some offhand comment along the lines of: “Unless anybody’s read Kafka…” To this I politely raised my hand and replied in the affirmative. I grew up reading Kafka and Stevenson. That’s not to say anything except for that I was a rather progressive child. Growing up listening to Treasure Island and The Trial, I developed a voracious appetite for the classics- in other words, the authors that knew how to correctly administer the English language; one really cannot be certain about the authors nowadays. As I grew older, I realized with a burgeoning sense of bereavement that ‘progressive’ no longer means flaunting with prowess a Brobdingnagian vocabulary. No, a progressive child now entails the finesse of phone savviness.

By now, it shouldn’t come as a surprise that I am something of a pedant on the topic of English grammar- a police unit (of one) on the lookout for punctuation criminals. I have a meter lurking in the recesses of my mind which ticks toward the Danger! half when my fellow homosapiens abuse punctuation. As soon as the needle enters the much-dreaded red zone, appraisal is passed.

There is a common rule that is ubiquitous to us punctuation pedants, and it is this: don’t use punctuation like an imbecile. It may seem like a quotidian observation, but the misuse of punctuation subsequently squashes any hope of communication. It’s like this. If we went fishing and failed to attach a worm to the hook, the fish would wonder what obscene abomination was interfering in their serene habitat; don’t drop a futile line to your fellow fishes.

In my humble opinion, anyone who inserts “its” where “it’s” is supposed to lie, should return to grade school; after all, English is America’s most commonly spoken language, is it not? How utterly disgraceful it is then, that many of us still cannot differentiate between the two contractions. To shame on those of you who bother arguing that fault lies with auto-correct. Of course autocorrect slipped up; it is a finicky appliance to be used with care. To be sure, if I ever text “your” instead of “you’re”, I’ve been abducted and am signalling for help.

As Lynne Truss, author of Eats, Shoots & Leaves said, “I apologise if you all know this, but the point is that many of you do not. Why else would they open a large play area for children, hang up a sign saying ‘Giant Kid’s Playground’, and then wonder why everyone stays away from it? (Answer: everyone is afraid of the Giant Kid).”

It is of no coincidence that the word ‘punctilious’, defined as showing great attention to detail or correct behavior, originates from ‘punctuation.’ It is a show of etiquette- of conscientiousness- to imbue correct punctuation. Some of you may have calculated that ‘to whom’ is rarely used in colloquial speech, and have therefore decided to forgo this expression, instead using ‘who’; at least, you cleverly figure, you will be correct a majority of the time. Permit me to say one thing: it doesn’t matter if you are correct 99% of the time. The single time you use ‘to who’, an unbidden thought crosses every grammar stickler’s mind and it is this: I’m afraid you’ve made a grammatical error. It’s not ‘to who’, but ‘to whom’. The preposition ‘to’ allows ‘who’ to become the indirect object, making ‘whom’ imperative. If that was difficult to ascertain, maybe it’s time to invent a new language (notice that I did not say learn. Many other languages require the use of indirect and direct objects, and it would thus be inadvisable to embark on a doomed expedition).

The bottom line is that it’s of utmost importance to write good and never make no punctuation mistakes. One’s porpoise should be to defend the years of the student body against bad writing and gramma. Most importantly, I hope my article made you simile.