No Punctuation Period: Difference between revisions

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{{quote|and then I asked him with my eyes to ask again yes and then he asked me would I yes to say yes my mountain flower and first I put my arms around him yes and drew him down to me so he could feel my breasts all perfume yes and his heart was going like mad and yes I said yes I will Yes.|'''[[James Joyce]]''', ''[[Ulysses]]''<ref>The final dot is one of the three punctuation signs in the whole ending chapter.</ref>}}

[[Self-Demonstrating Article|So youve found]] what seems to be a good [[Fanfic]] I mean you havent started reading it yet but its got a good description and better yet your [[OTP]] is in it Of course you have to read it thusly you click on it and beg wait um what is this where are the periods the question marks exclamation points Oh god no commas or colons no no [[Big No|NOOOOOOOOoooooo]]

Alas, you've just stumbled into a relic of the [['''No Punctuation Period]]''', a horrible time in which people apparently forgot how sentences were built. Taken to extremes it can result in a visual [[Wall of Text]], thus adding to its unreadability. Sadly, this happens outside of [[Fan Fics]] too, as many Tropers could tell you. There are a few havens of good style, [[Grammar Nazi|some brave netizens Tropers among them]], who have taken up arms to fight back the [[Serious Business|scourge of illiteracy]].

Often goes hand in hand with [[All Lowercase Letters]]. Has absolutely nothing to do with [[No Periods, Period]] or ''[[Zero Punctuation (Web Animation)|Zero Punctuation]]''. Let us mention neither here. Related to [[Wanton Cruelty to Thethe Common Comma]].

* A disturbing trend, in ''[[Naruto (Manga)|Naruto]]'' fanfiction at least, is for all punctuation to be correct except for the complete exclusion of periods in speaking sentences, despite periods being everywhere else. Exclamation points and question marks seem to stay in, however.

* The subtitles on the ''[[Spirited Away (Anime)|Spirited Away]]'' DVD never have periods - unless they have ellipses, exclamation or question marks, it's nothing.

== [[ComicsComic Books]] ==

* A rather unusual characteristic of comic books from [[The Silver Age of Comic Books]] and forward, particularly those from [[DC Comics]] (although [https://web.archive.org/web/20130320033524/http://goodcomics.comicbookresources.com/2010/01/28/comic-book-legends-revealed-245/ Marvel got in its share in 1971]), is a complete lack of any punctuation other than exclamation points and question marks. In the beginning it was because the low-quality paper stock would render any small marks, like periods or commas, invisible or illegible. As it stands, the omission of periods and the use of all caps is a stylistic choice, not practiced by all letterers. The dialog is instead structured by comic's own unique punctuation mark, the speech balloon, which provides flow and rhythm via spacial placement, as well as other tone information.

* One practice of modern poetry is to dispense with punctuation. The most famous example is [[EEE. E. Cummings]].

* There's an early 19th-century satirical work by [[Bunny Ears Lawyer|eccentric but extremely successful businessman]] [[wikipedia:Timothy Dexter|Lord Timothy Dexter]] called ''[[A Pickle for The Knowing Ones (Literature)|A Pickle for Thethe Knowing Ones]]'', which was at one point published without punctuation ("stops"), and had all of the missing marks in an appendix, with a note about how readers could sprinkle them through the text as they desired. The first editions didn't have the punctuation page; it was added as a [[Take That]] in later ones.

* David Mayne's ''[[The Book Ofof Samson]]'' only has two commas in the entire novel. (Although other punctuation marks are used.)

* Kind of justified examples can be found quite commonly in older novels and such works, where the current rules of grammar and spelling were non-existent at the time, and hence the punctuation (and general spelling/grammar) is all over the place. Pretty much the entirety of ''[[Robinson Crusoe (Literature)|Robinson Crusoe]]'' is a good example of this, although there are many others.

* "[[On The Train]]" is one of the most [[Egregious]] examples. Despite the majority of the punctuation being relatively correct, the story contained no commas whatsoever.

* The entirety of the original Italian text of Umberto Eco's ''[[The Name of the Rose (Literature)|The Name of the Rose]]'' was written without a single semi-colon. This had critics wondering, until the author admitted that it had been written on a typewriter without such a key and he didn't like to backspace and put a comma over a colon.

* The second part of ''[[The Sound and Thethe Fury]]'', narrated by a somewhat unstable Quentin, gradually discards all grammar and punctuation and devolves into a single run-on sentence that goes on for pages.

* Justified in the ''[[Archy and Mehitabel (Literature)]]'' poems by Don Marquis: Archy is a cockroach who writes by jumping headfirst onto the keys of [[Literary Agent Hypothesis|Marquis's typewriter]]. This means he can't type anything that requires holding down the shift key.

* There is a lack of punctuation throughout ''[[Guitar Highway Rose]]'', depending on whose point of view the section is from. This makes dialogue very confusing at times.

* Alan Paton, author of "''[[Cry, the Beloved Country"]]'', apparently dislikes quotation marks, instead using an en dash at the beginning of a paragraph to indicate someone is speaking.

* The book ''[[The Usual Rules]]'' by Joyce Maynard never uses quotation marks when anyone is speaking. In fact, the only time quotation marks are used is when another author's poem is quoted.

* ''[[Trainspotting (novel)|Trainspotting]]'' has different punctuation rules based on the point-of-view character. Each chapter is from a different perspective. Some of the narrators are better about it than others.

== [[Recorded and Stand-up Up Comedy]] ==

== [[Tabletop Games]] ==

* In ''[[Dungeons and Dragons (Tabletop Game)|Dungeons and& Dragons]]'', dwarven language contains little punctuation, just red highlighting for important words and slashes between sentences.

* ''[[Breath of Fire III (Video Game)|Breath of Fire III]]'': when the last word in a text box is also the end of a sentence, it never ends in a period. It's an exclamation point, a question mark, an ellipsis or nothing.

** ''[[Breath of Fire I (Video Game)|Breath of Fire I]]'' and ''[[Breath of Fire II (Video Game)|Breath of Fire II]]'' both did the same thing, which makes one wonder whether this was actually a mistake or done for stylistic reasons. The latter seems like the obvious choice on paper, but reading the in-game dialogue brings significant doubt to this theory.

* Every sentence in the original Japanese ''[[Pokémon]]'' games ends in either an exclamation point, question mark, or ellipses. One with a period was finally added for ''[[Pokémon Gold and Silver (Video Game)|Pokémon Gold and Silver]]''; it describes what happens when a Pokémon uses the move "Splash" (nothing).

* Another professional example: in ''[[Xenogears (Video Game)|Xenogears]]'', even though the dialogue was very colorful with all sorts of things (intentional misspellings not included), some sentences do not have periods, possibly due to the [[Blind Idiot Translation]].

* [[Cloudcuckoolander|Rin's]] rambling in ''[[Katawa Shoujo (Visual Novel)|Katawa Shoujo]]'' is written like this. In one massive [[Wall of Text]].

* ''[[Homestuck (Webcomic)|Homestuck]]'' has several characters typing like this.

* Ben "Yahtzee" Croshaw was told that his [[Motor Mouth|rapidly-narrated]] reviews sound like they have no punctuation, and so they were named ''[[Zero Punctuation (Web Animation)|Zero Punctuation]]''. One review shows what is apparently his script. It seems to consist mostly of long sentences with no commas.

*** For those who want a bit more concrete an example: [[The Bible (Literature)|The New Testament]] is, in fact, one of the ''best'' preserved manuscripts -- manymanuscripts—many copies and fragments of copies have survived, and most of the oldest ones have surfaced in the last century. On a collated text -- onetext—one created by combining every copy available -- itavailable—it is pretty much impossible to find a page where there isn't anything footnoted with an explanation of why they chose the version they did and what the variants were, in space-saving standardized code. (And this is also a text that was usually proofread, as evidenced by some copies having corrections; apparently it was suspected that God might be a [[Grammar Nazi]].) The different readings of punctuation can be important; a significant difference between the Catholic and Protestant churches is derived from whether Jesus said "Amen, I say to you, today you will be with me in Paradise," or "Amen, I say to you today, you will be with me in Paradise."

** Also with Classical Chinese, where punctuation is never used. This has led to a very fun type of exam question where the student is presented with a block of text and has to add the punctuation (made easier by the fact that Classical Chinese is written in a highly rhythmic and formalized style, finding the places to pause tend to come naturally after one reads the passages a few dozen times).

** In sections of the Talmud dealing with specific Biblical verses, the authors will frequently point out that some relevant word, if pronounced with different vowel sounds, can mean something completely different, and this is used as a way to tease out hidden levels of meaning embedded in the text. Relatedly, the fact that a reader has to know the words already in order to read the text is sometimes given as evidence of the existence of a parallel oral tradition that was given in conjunction to, and simultaneously with, the written text - since the written text on its own is unreadable (or at least hopelessly ambiguous) without some sort of extra-textual instructions for pronunciation.

** [[Wanton Cruelty to Thethe Common Comma|They simply don't have a grasp on proper sentence structure.]]

** [[The Snark Knight|They wish to put across the impression of being purely apathetic.]] [[In Withwith the In Crowd|You know, in order to look cool.]] [[Internet Tough Guy|On the internet.]]

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