BABBLE!

What’s the point of punctuation?

Babble’s citizens can’t communicate. They can’t tell the difference between speech and thoughts; their words run together. A stranger arrives with a bag. She doles out pink, odd-shaped items, explaining each piece’s function and how it will help the townsfolk: a period, a question mark, quotation marks, an exclamation point, and, finally, a comma (which can become an apostrophe). As each item is introduced—villagers don’t know it’s really an enlarged punctuation mark—it’s incorporated into the narrative in black type and in normal font size. At the outset, the text contains run-on sentences, but the gradual inclusion of punctuation renders the text readable as the story proceeds. Furthermore, on a meta level, communication among the villagers improves as they learn to distinguish between thoughts and vocalizations. This is an odd, confusing, contrived story. The author suggests that thinking and speaking are the same, that they occur simultaneously, and that people can’t differentiate between them. The tale will confound readers who know they can’t “see” punctuation marks when they’re speaking and thinking, though vocal intonation can imply certain marks. Besides marks, the digital pink-toned illustrations depict the villagers but with few discernible details (race and ethnicity are not made clear from either art or text). This suits the text, which, when lacking necessary punctuation, could also be described as ill-defined.

Aims for cleverness but misses the mark.