Following on from my grammar pedantry Top Ten, here's ten songs celebrating the wonders of punctuation.
Special mentions to Question Mark & The Mysterians, Slash, The Parenthetical Girls and !!! (which is a contender for worst band name ever: how do you even pronounce that?).
10. Discount - Apostrophe
Floridas own Discount. Sorry, I meant Florida's.
Being an English teacher, getting people to use the possessive apostrophe is the bane of my life.
9. The Wombats - Sex & Question Marks
Sex is one big question mark to me too.
Fans of the most inquisitive form of punctuation might also enjoy The Fuzztones - Look For The Question Mark.
8. Wire - Dot Dash
Wire use punctuation as Morse Code. Don't crash!
7. The Beat - Ranking Full Stop
Ranking Roger loved his Full Stops from the very first Beat single, of which this was double-A side with their more-played version of Tears of a Clown. The final full stop comes right at the end of the song though...
6. Spearmint - Punctuation
Today, class, Shirley won't just be teaching us about punctuation... but alliteration too!
Words!5. The Libertines - Up The Bracket
Alliteration
Helps you hide inside your head
Typewriter taps: use it as punctuation
To escape every grey degrading day of your life
Pete and Carl in parenthesis. (Pair of annoying chancers?)
4. Thea Gilmore - Punctuation
In legal documents and religious texts, punctuation is all-important. Thea proves that here...
‘Cause you see, I’ve got this theory that it’s only punctuation3. Amanda Palmer - Ampersand
That separates the list from you to me
And you can have your little war of full stops and meritings
But the real power’s in parentheses
The ghetto boys are catcalling meWonder what Neil Gaiman makes of that philosophy? (Let's not ask him, his answers tend to go on for years without end, like his stories.)
As I pull my keys from my pocket
I wonder if this method of courtship
Has ever been effective
Has any girl in history said
Sure, you seem so nice, let's get it on
Still, I always shock them when I answer
Hi my name's Amanda
And I'm not gonna live my life on one side of an ampersand
2. Vampire Weekend - Oxford Comma
So the Oxford Comma, if you don't know, is the optional comma you may sometimes use before the 'and' at the end of a list. Used properly, it can avoid confusion and comedy...
Vampire Weekend though, they don't give an f-bomb about it. Philistines.
1. Dan Baird - I Love You, Period
Top single from the former Georgia Satellite in which Dan's affair with his English teacher is curtailed by bad punctuation...
That's the problem with English teachers.They let pedantry get in the way of romance.
Question mark? Exclamation mark!
