357 days until 40

Punctuation.  Did you know that there are 14 punctuation marks?  In no particular order, there are:

.     Period
?    Question mark
!     Exclamation point
,     Comma
;     Semi-colon
:     Colon
'     Apostrophe
-     Dash
-     Hyphen (not to be confused with a dash)
( )   Parentheses
[ ]   Brackets
" "  Quotation  marks
/     Slash

and my personal favorite...

...    Ellipsis

Is that odd...to have a favorite punctuation mark?  If you look thru anything I type, email, blog, jibber-jabber...you will see that I use them a lot.  Probably too much.  But I don't care!  I have to even try not to use them, as I would use them in almost every sentence.  Yep...that's pretty odd.

There are several ways to use them, and I am sure, there are many "rules" and I won't even claim to know them all.  They can let the reader finish the thought or come to their our conclusion, if used at the end of a sentence.   Ellipsis can also be used to omit information.

Or, they way I use them, is for a pause in the thought or sentence.  The pause can be for dramatic effect or just a pause.