”I often wonder how I lived so long, wrote so many words, without ever fully understanding what I was missing—how much I was missing with you.
Years of commas jumbled through clauses, the feeling of repetition like waves lapping against a boat, no way to distinguish one from the next (the shy parentheses were certainly never up to the task). And the colon: the rigidity, the formality of the colon reeking of lists and answers and finality. You would never do such a thing.
And there you were all along, waiting to be used—to shout from the center of the sentence, HERE I AM—but you may now continue along with what you were saying.
How versatile you are for a quick aside, for a long pause—or for a jarring exclamation! How many sentences have benefitted from the graces of your wide and slender form, calling the perfect amount of attention to whatever it is that needs it?
Oh, em dash—and I mean this with all of my heart and mind and pen—you are the greatest piece of punctuation that ever was created.
