While working on editing the fic that will never finish being beta'ed (seriously. I think this one wont' be posted until the new millennium. Not exaggerating) and controlling the urge to add in a random vampire attack (this is hard. I like vampires. I like fighting. You see where this could go) I decided to count instances of punctuation.
...please, please do not judge me.
Anyway.
207 semicolons
33 colons
559 -- (dashes?)EM DASHES THANK YOU
JENGRRL and
AMIREAL5513 commas
5383 periods
3894 quotation marks
2820 apotrophes
Okay, before there is an unfriending orgy because it's officially likely I'll end up on a talk show in twenty years talking about how the letters dance, let me explain.
When
eleveninches was betaing "The Principle of Exclusion", she had a special note for me about the -- (dashes? God I should know this) em dashes. It was a special capitalized note. It might have been sparkling to get my attention. To wit, stop it with the dashes em dashes. So I viewed the advice, found it good, and went to discover what crimes I could commit against some other form of punctuation.
I discovered the semi-colon.
Semis and I have never been close. It's just not that kind of relationship, you know? We talk sometimes, but it's stilted. They don't understand me. I don't understand them. We had some arguments--you know how it goes. Dashes (fuck it, I'll call them that until someoen corrects me) Em dashes and I have been OTP for years. We're practically *married*. I named a set of freckles after him, you know? We're happy. But I kept thinking, I'm too young to settle down. I need to branch out. Check out the other punctuation in the sea.
So now I do this thing where I think, let's semicolon this! Or colon it! And look up the official grammar guide! (I have never done this in my life.) I suppose this is kind of the grammatical version of reading How To Get a Boyfriend or something. We're still not sure we understand each other, but we do have fun.
I just don't know how long this relationship will last, really.