Dear Dash - And Sometimes Hyphen

Dear dash I do not know your name

Or from whence you came

Nor did I know of how you thrive

Common folks hardly kept you alive.

Alas you fought with semi-colons, commas, and periods

To stand between the age-old standards of pristine punctuation.

It must be painful to watch the semi-colon move into your place

With ease and grace it erases all trace of where you should be seen

Yet, as it does this evil trick it emphatically harbors you right in its midst.

Dear dash I do now know you well

It’s as though you merely fell

Into grammarian business for the sake of pauses

Yet every time I see you holding onto independent clauses

Or occasionally dining amongst compound modifiers, questions and answers,

Spelling out words, and stuttering ever so sweetly, you do not make a sound.

Were you called by any other name – it would not matter.

For I would love you still as much as the first time we met

When I was in pre-school at 4 years-old and a grammar-obsessed, blonde-haired little smarty-pants.

Grammarrama