{"id":2548,"date":"2012-04-28T08:21:05","date_gmt":"2012-04-28T13:21:05","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/steve.cooleysekula.net\/blog\/?p=2548"},"modified":"2012-04-28T11:40:05","modified_gmt":"2012-04-28T16:40:05","slug":"putting-punctuation-in-politics","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/steve.cooleysekula.net\/blog\/2012\/04\/28\/putting-punctuation-in-politics\/","title":{"rendered":"Putting punctuation in politics"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"http:\/\/steve.cooleysekula.net\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/04\/20120428-081322.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full alignleft\" src=\"http:\/\/steve.cooleysekula.net\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/04\/20120428-081322.jpg\" alt=\"20120428-081322.jpg\" width=\"225\" height=\"225\" \/><\/a>While driving through the University Park neighborhood the other day, I saw the new Romney campaign sign on a lawn (see left). Seeing the sign for the first time made me realize that an old pet peeve of mine &#8211; lack of punctuation in signs &#8211; was still peeving me.<\/p>\n<p>For example, I have always been bothered by the sign that says,&#8221;Slow children at play.&#8221; The sign should read, &#8220;Slow! Children at play&#8221; or &#8221; Slow: children at play.&#8221; Otherwise, I find the sign conjures images of either mentally impaired children whose street is marked as if they lived in a dystopian ghetto, or the more comical image of kids playing in slow motion out in the street.<\/p>\n<p>What did my mind see when it read the Romney sign? I saw a comma, turning the poster into an anti-Romney imperative sentence: &#8221; Romney, believe in America.&#8221; Of course, it is intended to be read as if it contained a colon, &#8220;Romney: Believe in America.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>We should demand punctuation in all of our signs. Punctuation is needed in order to clarify the meaning and rhythm of sentences. Since meaning is so easily distorted in a political campaign, political parties should, more than anyone else, embrace punctuation.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>While driving through the University Park neighborhood the other day, I saw the new Romney campaign sign on a lawn (see left). Seeing the sign for the first time made me realize that an old pet peeve of mine &#8211; lack of punctuation in signs &#8211; was still peeving me. For example, I have always [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"activitypub_content_warning":"","activitypub_content_visibility":"","activitypub_max_image_attachments":3,"activitypub_interaction_policy_quote":"anyone","activitypub_status":"","footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[8],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-2548","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-politics","7":"czr-hentry"},"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/steve.cooleysekula.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2548","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/steve.cooleysekula.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/steve.cooleysekula.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/steve.cooleysekula.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/steve.cooleysekula.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2548"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/steve.cooleysekula.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2548\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2552,"href":"https:\/\/steve.cooleysekula.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2548\/revisions\/2552"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/steve.cooleysekula.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2548"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/steve.cooleysekula.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2548"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/steve.cooleysekula.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2548"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}