Period!

Some people enjoy topping off a declarative statement with the word “period”—for example, “The best snack is blueberries. Period.” Guys, there’s no need to sound out your punctuation, and doing so doesn’t make blueberries anymore delicious. Also, saying the word “period” actually constitutes a completely new sentence, meaning you now need to employ an additional period. What you’re actually saying is: “The best snack is blueberries (period) Period (period)” So if you want to be grammatically correct you have to say, “The best snack is blueberries. Period. Period. Period.” But now you’re in a kind of quicksand, because each of these additional periods will also require vocalization—which adds yet more sentences and yet more periods. What I’m saying is, if you want to legitimately sound out all your punctuation—and apparently for some reason you do—you need to sit there saying “period” all day, infinity times. And all of this could have been avoided if you simply said you enjoyed blueberries, and we would have just kind of imagined the period in our heads.

Sometimes saying “period” isn’t enough an affront to the spoken word. Occasionally I’ll hear some guy end his statement with “Period! End of sentence!” For example, “You people need to stop eating my blueberries! Period! End of sentence!” Come on, man, what’s the point of that? It’s not like ending your sentence assertively precludes a rebuttal. Just because you’ve said a complete sentence doesn’t mean I can’t chip in with a new sentence. This sort of technique only works when you say, “End of conversation!” because then the other person is locked out from a response. When people say “end of conversation” to me, I think to myself, “Oh man! The conversation seems to have ended and I didn’t even get a chance to respond.” The only thing to do at this point is say, “Begin punch to the face,” and then you punch them in the face.

5 thoughts on “Period!

  1. so yeah. I’m a friend of cristen’s, she made me start reading this. So I have been, for the last 4 minutes. I like this one. I don’t know if you genuinely come to these conclusions on your own and in your head, but I thought Id be a presumptuous one and mention a though of my own.
    Right along with period, is I could care less. Oh you could? that implies you’re NOT at the bottom level of caring, cause you could, in fact, care less than you do at present moment. I tend to point out that the correct phrasing is “I couldn’t care less” THAT would mean you’re at the absolute bottom level, no lower.

    yeah.

  2. Disregarding your casually insulting insinuations of forgery, I know what you’re talking about with could/n’t care less, but I don’t correct anybody about this, mostly because I value the chance for human friendship. Instead I allow for “I could care less” to make sense, in the following manner: to suggest that you could care less implies a general indifferences to the act of caring; you could care less, but perhaps you don’t: it’s immaterial. Your level of caring is such that you’re apathetic to the exact measure of your slight emotional investment on the issue. This isn’t what these people actually mean, but it’s what I hear in my head.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published.