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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]].
 
Sometimes, though, [[No Punctuation Is Funnier]].
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== [[Anime]] and [[Manga]] ==
* 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.
* Given that periods are not required in written Japanese, a lot of scanlations are prone to this. Or else! They will end every sentence the same way! With an exclamation mark! Even when it makes no sense! And when it reduces the impact of sentences that had an exclamation mark in Japanese!
 
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== [[Literature]] ==
* One practice of modern poetry is to dispense with punctuation. The most famous example is [[EEE. E. Cummings]].
* Can also be done for stylistic reasons: viz., the last chapter of ''[[Ulysses]]''. Well, it has one period somewhere in the middle, and one at the end (said by some to indicate an orgasm).
* 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 Of Samson'' only has two commas in the entire novel. (Although other punctuation marks are used.)
* The fiction of Portuguese novelist José Saramago features only periods and commas, and nothing more. Furthermore, there's no indication of dialogue or who's talking what, except that each piece of dialogue starts with capital letters, just as if it was written normally. Finally, his paragraphs extend over pages. Sweden awarded him the Nobel Prize for Literature.
** The thing is, he ''pulls it off.'' After the first few pages, it stops being difficult to follow, and he uses it effectively to set his tone.
* 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.
* Oh, [[Cormac McCarthy]], why do you hate quotation marks so?
* The second part of ''[[The Sound and The 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.
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* ''[[The House On Mango Street]]'' by Sandra Cisneros never, ever seems to use quotation marks. You have to figure out who's talking.
* Same with ''[[Cry the Beloved Country]]'', in imitation of the King James Bible. Justified since the main character is a preacher.
* 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.
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== 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.
 
== [[Theatre]] ==
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== [[Video Games]] ==
* ''[[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]].
* [[Telepathic Spacemen|Vell-os]] telepathy in ''[[EV Nova]]'' (which is text-only for dialog) is depicted with no punctuation or [[All Lowercase Letters|capitalization]]. <it looks like this>
 
== [[Web Comics]] ==
* Roast Beef of ''[[Achewood]]'' (and Nice Pete as well)'s speech balloons have a lower sized font than the rest of the comic's population, and no punctuation. Presumably this reflects a quiet, flat tone of voice.
* ''[[Homestuck (Webcomic)|Homestuck]]'' has several characters typing like this.
** Dave Strider and Aradia Megido type with no punctuation, but split the text up so a period equals a new line.
** Nepeta Leijon and Terezi Pyrope only use exclamation and question marks.
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== [[Web Original]] ==
* 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.
* Lucy on ''[[The War Comms]]'' barely even knows what a Shift key ''is''. Rod and Sue can be pretty bad about this sometimes, too.
* This sometimes happens with [[TV Tropes]] examples
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* In a wholly justified example, the ancient Romans didn't use punctuation as we know it, so all Latin written in the Classical period would appear this way (including extant inscriptions). As a result, modern-day Latinists can't trust the punctuation that has long since been added to the vast majority of Latin literature which has been transmitted through the centuries via copied and recopied manuscripts.
** For that matter, Greek and the other languages of the day had similar problems. And they did not put spaces between words, either. And [[Rouge Angles of Satin|scribes misspelled or transposed words]]. Let's just say there are a lot of headaches involved with the text of certain works even when they have come down whole.
*** 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 -- many copies and fragments of copies have survived, and most of the oldest ones have surfaced in the last century. On a collated text -- one created by combining every copy available -- 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."
*** The King James Version and several other Bible translations have ''a'' whole load of words ''in'' italics, seemingly ''at'' random, because translators added those words to make the text work under English grammar. Some [other] translations use [square] brackets instead to denote insertions. [http://www.biblebelievers.com/jmelton/italics.html Adding these words appears to explicitly endorse one of a range of possible readings of the original text.]
* And all of the above instances can be derived from the fact that true spoken language contains very few punctuation marks anyway. As a test, try recording and transcribing five minutes of casual conversation (especially between children), and try to find where to put the full stops. Alternatively, write a speech, then read it, and [[Realistic Diction Is Unrealistic|try to make it sound natural while maintaining the exact punctuation you used when writing]].
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* There are a few reasons why people on the internet would type without punctuation nowadays:
** [[Rapid-Fire Typing|They're in a hurry. Why waste the time with the extra keystrokes?]] Because punctuation doesn't matter as long as you get your message across, once the reader has decoded it.
** [[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.]]
** [[They Just Didn't Care|They genuinely]] ''[[They Just Didn't Care|do not care.]]''
** [[What an Idiot!|They were idiots.]] (Thats not fair I have dyslexia or Aspergers or adhd or hangnails or chocoholism google said so!)
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