From a text I sent to the girlfriend earlier, asking for her parents’ address so that mine could send a card, etc.
Yep, I’m so sad that I even punctuate my texts correctly. I’m a stickler for correct punctuation, because it really does alter the meaning in so many cases.
I read that “Eats, Shoots and Leaves” book a few years ago, and spent half of the time thinking “Well, duh, I KNOW this already”, or “How can people get this wrong?!” It was not so much preaching to the choir, but to a bishop or something.
There are a couple of uses of punctuation which really mark my writing style:
Oxford commas (I’m British; can’t help myself)
Excessive use of semi-colons
Punctuation outside/inside quotations dependent on context (I’m ridiculously anal on this. If a quotation ends with a full stop, then that can go inside the quote marks. If it doesn’t, but I’m using it to end a sentence, the full stop is after the closing quote mark)
