Writers and word geeks, take note: Monday was the ninth annual National Punctuation Day.

According to Chase’s Calendar of Events, the faux holiday celebrates “the lowly comma, correctly used quotation marks, and other proper uses of periods, semicolons, and the ever-mysterious ellipsis.”

In other words, it's the day to correct the hell out of your colleagues’ copy.

And if you’re feeling inspired, check out the National Punctuation Day contest to find the official punctuation mark of the president of the United States.

Here are the contest rules, according to the holiday’s organizers:

“Write one paragraph with a maximum of three sentences using the following 13 punctuation marks to explain which should be ‘presidential,’ and why: apostrophe, brackets, colon, comma, dash, ellipsis, exclamation point, hyphen, parentheses, period, question mark, quotation mark, and semicolon. You may use a punctuation mark more than once, and there is no word limit. Multiple entries are permitted.”

Get the full details, including how to enter, here.

Meanwhile, here are four PR Daily stories on punctuation to help you celebrate:

• 10 signs that desperately need to be proofread
• Your guide to the history and nuance of punctuation
• What the ampersand is an Oxford comma?
• 5 frequently misused punctuation marks

And a few head-slapping punctuation errors just because:



(via Apostrophe Catastrophes)



(via NationalPunctuationDay.com)



(via IlliterateBusiness.ca)

(Image via)