*'s or ()'s? That is the question.

There are many odd things about the English language.  Some even consider it one of the most complicated and difficult languages to learn.  In addition to confusing rules and homophones, there is the consideration of punctuation.

Without googling it ... can you name all of the punctuation marks?  (See below for the answers* and tell me how many you guessed correctly in the comments).

This post, however, is going to address asterisks (versus parentheses).  My sister (Laura) recently requested I refrain from the usage of asterisks.  My understanding (correct me if I am wrong) is that they were causing her fingers to get tired (silly Mac).  But it occured to me if anyone else were to read this blog, would they also tire of scrolling?  So please, before you scroll or tire of scrolling and thereby tire of my posts ... consider the following.



Asterisks are voluntary.  You don't have to scroll.  Parentheses further or qualify my thoughts, but asterisks take them somewhere else, sometimes completely unrelated**.  I once said, "asterisks do for the writer what can seldom be done for the speaker."  There are many of us who think tangently, and can easily get side tracked from our thought process, and, when speaking, may never get back to the main point at hand.  With asterisks, I can save you the trouble of following those additional thoughts (unless you want to).

Asterisks are enhancing.  They add to the quality of what you are reading.  If you are even reading a post in my blog, I assume you've come here of your own volition.  Which, I also assume, means you are interested in the content.  So it is my responsibilty to enhance your experience as much as possible.  My parenthitical remarks, I feel, are necessary to expound within context, whereas asterisks are indepentant (though sometimes related) thoughts and can take an article to places that ultimately enhance your reading***.

Asterisks are expressive.  I can share so much more within the confines of this post.  When I say, "asterisks are enhancing," I refer to your benefit.  However, when I say, "asterisks are expressive," I refer to my benefit.  I can have a lot to say.  One could argue, that is the very reason one blogs.  To get their thoughts out their head****.  When I can successfully express portions of a thought (no matter how tangent), I feel satisified I got some of it out.



So please, consider the above when encountering my asterisks.  They are voluntary, you don't have to scroll down, or even read them when you reach the bottom of a post. But you may miss an enhanced experience of an article that you are choosing to read. But ultimately, I use asterisks to express myself and further my thoughts. You could say my entire blog is an asterisk.




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*did you scroll down here without even trying? When you are ready for the answer, highlight the rest of this sentence: This site offers 14: the period, question mark, exclamation point, comma, semicolon, colon, dash, hyphen, parentheses, brackets, braces, apostrophe, quotation marks, and ellipses (an asterisk is not a punctuation mark). Some sites also include slash and backslash, and distinguish between single and double quotation marks as well as suggest an underline and underscore as punctuation.

**like this.

***please refer to "asterisks are voluntary".

****writing about asterisks is a personal expression, not necessarily beneficial to society at large.