THE DARK SIDE OF PUNCTUATION, PART 2

New Research Continues Carl Jung’s Study of Punctuation Pathology

Only the Shadow knows how much of your writing lurks within the shadow

Editor’s note: just before Carl Jung’s death in1961, the groundbreaking Swiss psychiatrist began to study other parts of the human psyche, such as fonts (“Helvetica is boring”), and abstract art (“Why did Picasso give that woman two heads? Which one of them has schizophrenic tendencies?”) before settling in to do extensive research on human speech patterns.

After the world’s first view of his notes on punctuation marks, researchers have continued Jung’s work and published the following paper on additional members of the punctuation universe.

The Ellipsis

These patients suffer from an inability to express their inner feelings… it’s as if something has been left out.

When interacting with other punctuation marks and letters, the ellipsis is unable to create a meaningful connection. Friends and family are left wondering exactly what’s going on.

This inability to connect often leads to uncomfortable silences with the ellipsis being forced out of the party and left to suffer in silence.

In our tests, patient after patient would come so close to breaking through in therapy and then just trail off in silence.

Warning: due to the unknown content of their unconscious, ellipses may be a danger to themselves.

So many people overdose on certainty, assuming they know the inner feelings of an ellipsis. Statistics indicate otherwise.

Suicide is a serious problem. If you know anyone, not just an ellipsis, who is depressed or showing any abnormal withdrawal from normal life, please reach out and don’t stop trying to connect, no matter how many times you might fail…

With proper therapy, the ellipsis can lead a meaningful life by adding suspense to cliffhangers, poignant pauses in character-driven fiction, and perfect timing for the punch lines in comedy sets.

The Apostrophe

These patients suffer from a most bizarre form of schizophrenia.

In the vast majority of cases, apostrophes display a pathological possessiveness, wanting to know — and own — everyone’s business. In some cases, they will even claim a juicy excerpt from a hard-working set of quotation marks too busy holding together an entire paragraph.

However, in odd situations, they display a whole ‘nother symptom of dysfunction, as they will chop off parts of information, showing no remorse at all.

Currently, we are unable to determine if this second set of symptoms is a passive-aggressive or even violent power grab by a punctuation mark that can’t have everything it wants or a manifestation of a benign form of dementia in which it merely forgets.

Are apostrophes mocking the world when they shout “Bring ’em on!” while murdering an innocent t and h?

Or are they just being forgetful when they declare “the ’01 Lakers were better than Jordan’s Bulls,” neglecting the fact that basketball was invented in 1896, so there could have been a 1901 Lakers team as well?

Researchers may never be able to answer these questions as the inflated ego of the apostrophe makes it incapable of introspection.

Warning: exercise extreme caution with your valuables when interacting with the apostrophe.

They live by a single rallying cry: “What’s yours is mine and what’s mine is mine.”

Editor’s note: their cousin, the prime, is another individual that shows signs of a massively inflated sense of self, as it only measures itself in terms of feet. Not even John Holmes and Ron Jeremy have the balls to do that.

HLTs

These patients, sub-grouped into em dashes and en dashes, display an almost fascist desire for organization.

HLT is the scientific term for Horizontal Line Thingies.

Don’t laugh.

Botanists use the classification LYF — Little Yellow Flowers — for the vast number of tiny flowers that have not been named and classified.

There are too many instances where HLTs attempt to dominate and conquer any message, causing writers to lose their flow. Their arrogance shocked us during our research.

Given their common beginnings — the straight line — it is difficult to understand why these patients believe they stand at the summit of the punctuation hierarchy and have the right to boss around all the other letters and punctuation marks.

All we can do at this point is document their dysfunctional behavior.

The em dash displays a form of God complex, thinking it has the right to eliminate commas, colons, and even parentheses — a flagrant act of grammatical genocide.

Though shorter, and looked down upon by its massive sibling, the en dash is a more analytical type of a killer who seems to enjoy eliminating every to and through that gets between him and his beloved ranges of numbers.

He will also murder the occasional from or and, shortening a window of time from between 5 and 10 minutes to 5–10 minutes. When it comes to killing, though, the en dash only needs 1–2 seconds. That’s how quickly these patients can commit their crimes.

Warning: due to their narcissism and feelings of entitlement HLTs can engage in a highly dangerous form of groupthink.

Dr. Jung only scratched the surface, referring to periods as follows:

These particular little grammar Nazis must be stopped at all cost if the human race ever hopes to communicate like adults. (Note: I don’t want to live in a world where my grandchildren start conducting conversations solely with strings of letters or crude drawings.)

However, he grossly underestimated the danger posed when these characters go unchecked.

You can’t have 卐 without a group of zealous and organized HLTs.

We hope governments will heed this research and institute new policies to contain this threat.

The Hyphen

These patients have a delicate constitution and require special treatment.

Better known as a weak distant cousin of the HLT, the hyphen suffers from imposter syndrome.

At times, two hyphens will work together and try to pass themselves off as a mighty em dash. In most cases, they are exposed and humiliated for this offense.

The hyphen works many menial jobs and is largely ignored — many writers don’t even know when one is necessary.

They are also spurned by the elegant and continental portmanteau for breaking up words beautifully suited to a unique purpose.

The hyphen shows symptoms of poor self-esteem, depression, and even suicide. From the article Thousands of Hyphens Perish as English Marches On:

About 16,000 words have succumbed to the pressures of the Internet age and lost their hyphens in a new edition of the Shorter Oxford English Dictionary.

The research staff acknowledges this is one of those rare cases where the emotional reaction of the patient may be justified.

To put it in technical terms, “you’re not paranoid if they’re really out to get you.”

We recommend a treatment of regular medication and have written prescriptions for a strong antidepressant and pain killers as these unfortunate grammatical gingers await their demise.

The Parenthesis

These patients are the most creative punctuation marks in the written world (and for good reason, as they show amazing flexibility and adaptability in almost any situation, including, but not limited to: adding a single word to specify a date or dollar amount, translate a foreign word, or indicate emphasis; including a fragment such as an author citation or the logical flow of a calculation or process; forming one or more sentences which could include explanations, the writer’s thoughts or feelings on the subject at hand, or show confusion, disagreement, or disgust with a character’s actions, or; writing a full paragraph or page that allows a form of stream of consciousness writing that would be unreadable if presented in a never-ending string of written text with absolutely no nada não nil non nyet zero zilch indication of organized thought, allowing a story to run on indefinitely and without purpose), but also the least understood.

While its cousin, the bracket is known for its rigid adherence to structure[both in finance and in screenwriting], the parenthesis is a born optimist.

It understands and treasures every thought and emotion within the human experience, making the parenthesis a great uniter, happy to include any thought or feeling rejected by the writer and make these outcasts feel welcome and contained within any sentence.

Unlike HLTs, the parenthesis does not impose draconian immigration policies that would separate a young description from the inspiration that birthed it, leaving them lost, lonely and vulnerable to long-term psychological trauma.

The parenthesis displays exceptional fortitude in continuing to fight the good fight, despite its awareness of the overwhelming odds it faces against the subjective and often irrational arbiters of writing styles.

History’s pages (literally, just look inside a history book) are marked by the valiant efforts of the parenthesis, no matter how many of them have been cut down in their prime.

The parenthesis is also known for its humility, humanity, and softness.

You can’t have ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ without parentheses.

And how in the world can we have ( • )( • ) without parentheses?

Having sung the praise of the remarkable parenthesis, the research group still recommends caution in overstimulating these patients.

Truth be told, parentheses don’t have good taste. They’re like the NBC Page of punctuation — cheerful, well-meaning, and happy to help everyone, but lacking any frame of reference or the ability to keep the riff raff out.

And that’s how you get the literary equivalent of Kenneth Parcell’s Last Party Ever:

For this reason, we recommend strict supervision of parentheses at all times. And never, NEVER, allow them to band together with a bunch of dysfunctional commas.

The research team wishes to thank the family of Carl Jung for sharing his unfinished research with the world. His notebooks have proven invaluable in furthering our study of the human psyche. Those notebooks were published in 2019.