Apparently punctuation is optional now.
I know this because I help run a local Facebook community group with around 12,000 members, which means I get a front row seat to watching the English language get quietly murdered, one status update at a time.
Some posts are clear but some appear to have been typed during an emergency and some contain absolutely no punctuation whatsoever.
None.
No full stops. No commas. No paragraph breaks. No obvious indication that one thought has finally ended and another one has unfortunately started.
Just words.
Lots and lots of words.
Apparently the reader is expected to work it out.
- Full stops? Unnecessary bureaucracy.
- Commas? Government overreach.
- Paragraphs? Woke nonsense.
- Apostrophes? Elitist.
- Question marks? If you can’t tell I’m asking a question, that’s on you, mate.
Just keep typing until the thought ends, then immediately begin another thought without warning.
There’s something strangely confident about it.
You’ll see a post advertising an event, for example, and it’ll have a date, an admission price, a different early admission price, a table booking price, a deadline, a phone number (if ya lucky – very lucky), something about dogs, possibly a raffle, and three separate instructions.
All in one sentence.
You’re no longer reading it at that point.
You’re decoding it. You’re the decoder!
You start going backwards.
Hang on.
Was that £1.50 for adults?
Or children?
Was it a fiver before 10am or after 10am?
Are dogs £2?
Do the dogs need to book by the end of September or just the adults?
Nobody knows. Not even the dogs. Not a bloody clue.
By the time you understand the thing, you deserve a certificate. And a lie down.
Punctuation gets treated as though it is some fussy grammatical decoration invented by sadistic English teachers purely to make children miserable.
It is not.
It is there for the reader.
A full stop tells me that thought has finished.
A comma helps separate bits of information.
A colon tells me something is coming.
A question mark tells me you are asking something rather than making a strangely aggressive statement.
And paragraphs give my eyes somewhere to bloody rest.
We barely notice good punctuation because it does its job quietly.
Bad punctuation, or no punctuation at all, forces the reader to do extra work.
That’s the important bit.
You might know exactly what you meant when you typed it.
The person reading it doesn’t live inside your head.
Although, judging by some Facebook posts, apparently we’re expected to.
Then there is CAPS LOCK.
CAPS LOCK deserves its own special mention.
Some people seem to believe that putting something in capital letters makes it important.
And they are right.
Up to a point.
THIS STANDS OUT.
But if you write the whole bloody thing like this:
PLEASE CAN EVERYONE REMEMBER THAT THE CAR PARK WILL BE CLOSED FROM 7PM AND ANY CARS LEFT THERE AFTER THAT TIME MAY BE LOCKED IN PLEASE SHARE THANKS
Then nothing stands out.
YOU SHOUTING EVERY WORD MEANS NOT A SINGLE WORD STANDS OUT.
It just makes everyone assume you’ve had a stroke at the keyboard.
You’ve removed the contrast.
It’s the typographical equivalent of standing in a pub and screaming every sentence at exactly the same volume.
After a while, nobody hears emphasis.
They just hear shouting.
Capital letters work because MOST of the surrounding words are not capital letters.
Bold text works because most of the surrounding text is not bold.
An exclamation mark works because, ideally, you’ve not used seventeen of them.
!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! (go on, count them. ya know you want to – there’s 18)
That doesn’t make your point seventeen times more important.
It makes me think your finger’s stuck to the “1” key and you’ve given up trying to save yourself.
And perhaps the strangest part of all this is that we’ve never had more help with writing.
Phones correct spelling.
Browsers underline mistakes.
Word processors suggest punctuation.
Predictive text finishes sentences.
There are grammar checkers.
There are AI tools.
There’s probably software somewhere prepared to write your entire village fête announcement, organise the raffle and emotionally support the tombola.
Yet people still manage to produce public posts that read like a shopping list written during a bloody earthquake.
I’m not talking about people making the odd spelling mistake.
Everyone does that.
I do it.
I’m not talking about dyslexia either, or people who genuinely struggle with writing.
That’s something completely different.
I’m talking about the strange habit of writing something intended for hundreds or thousands of other people and giving zero thought to how those people are supposed to read it.
Communication has two sides.
Writing it.
And somebody else actually understanding it.
The second part seems to have become optional in a “I don’t give a shit” kind of way.
Perhaps social media has encouraged some of this.
We type quickly.
We post immediately.
We rarely read things back.
The little text box asks, “What’s on your mind?” and some people take that instruction extremely literally.
Everything currently on their mind appears in the box at once.
No editing.
No filtering.
No punctuation.
Just consciousness.
Publish.
The result sometimes looks less like writing and more like someone opening a valve and letting the whole lot pour out uncontrolled.
And yes, language changes.
Grammar changes.
People have always moaned about how younger generations write.
I’m sure somebody once complained that the semicolon was destroying civilisation.
This is not really about preserving some sacred version of English.
I couldn’t care less whether somebody splits an infinitive before breakfast (that game me a headache).
It is about making yourself understood.
If you’re telling people where something is, when it starts, what it costs and what they need to do, make it easy for them to understand.
That’s all punctuation really does. It gives the reader little road signs.
Stop here.
Pause here.
This bit belongs with that bit.
New thought starting.
Question coming.
Important bit here.
Without those signs, everyone is just driving around the paragraph hoping for the best.
So yes, use punctuation.
You don’t need to become an English teacher. But it would help if you’d ever listened to one.
You don’t need to have opinions on the Oxford comma. Nobody does, deep down, not even linguists.
You don’t need to develop strong opinions about semicolons.
You just need to occasionally stop typing.
Put a full stop in. Or just STOP!
Maybe even start a new paragraph.
Go wild.
And for the love of all that’s readable,
turn CAPS LOCK off.
Unless something is actually on fire.
In which case:
FIRE!
See?
That stood out.