We are unattractive know-all obsessives who get things out of proportion and are in continual peril of being disowned by our exasperated families.
On the page, punctuation performs its grammatical function, but in the mind of the reader it does more than that. It tells the reader how to hum the tune.
By tragic historical coincidence a period of abysmal under-educating in literacy has coincided with this unexpected explosion of global self-publishing. Thus people who don't know their apostrophe fro...
It hurts, though. It hurts like hell. Even in the knowledge that our punctuation has arrived at its present state by a series of accidents; even in the knowledge that there are at least seventeen rule...
If colons and semicolons give themselves airs and graces, at least they also confer airs and graces that the language would be lost without.
I apologise if you all know this, but the point is many, many people 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...