Why I Don't Use Periods and Why You Shouldn't Either, Period

Hey all,

I've only been at this blog for about 2 weeks now but as a matter of function, it makes sense for me to clarify how it will operate and how I write.  I am taken with a vast gratitude for all who have stayed with me for the first few weeks, as I am really just beginning to become comfortable with blogging in general and creative writing as a daily discipline.  You are great motivation!

With that said, I'll always do my best to explain some of my idiosyncrasies.  I'm a very eccentric person; often that has the effect of turning people away quickly or makes me most affable.  As I've grown, I've been able to see that it's really all a matter of communication.  If you are unique, your style will flourish one day.  It's just a matter of taking that uniqueness and sharing it uniquely with your unique subject.  The difference between idiosyncrasy and idiosyn"crazy" is the capacity to put it all in a way others can understand.  If you share yourself in such a way as to only appease yourself, then how can anyone else bother to be interested?

Speaking to those idiosyncrasies, many of you likely noticed what looks to be a glaring editing problem.  It's something taught very early in school.  No, it's not font type (do young gradeschoolers even write papers in ink anymore?!).  It's not odd capitalization.  What you see comes at the end of a paragraph or a sentence.  My thoughts end without periods! [note: of course I will use them if I am in a professional role that requires it]

The period, as used at the end of a paragraph or discrete sentence, has bothered me for a few years now.  As I began to use social media more, it's use became quaint.  I began perceiving it as a way for people to attempt to seem forceful or official in vain.  I could see it almost as a certain kind of arrogance of perfectionism and 'professionalism' that is indeed rather hollow.  Mostly, it just isn't really necessary!

So, let's look at why it bothers me functionally.  I will concede its use as a way to connect sentences.  It stops one and starts another, preventing grand collisions of ideas and cultivating flow.  We can pause, gather, and saunter on to the next thought.  That is just about where its usefulness ends

Why the necessity at the end of a paragraph?  Isn't it a bit redundant, considering that there will already be a break and jump to the next paragraph, or a conclusion to the piece as a whole?  I see it as almost insulting the reader's intelligence and giving them a false sense of conclusiveness:  if they believe your writing is compelling, they will make that call themselves

Beyond simple agitation and superfluousness,  the use of end periods (this will be the working term, to differentiate from the use of periods between sentences) also has distinct problems for how we view and share knowledge and the author.  If we can reconsider how they are used, we can enter into a modus operandi that encourages humility, creativity, and the collective duty to create culture and public discourse

The Death of the Period

The world lost a titan of literature and philosophy just a few weeks ago.  Though my delving into his work is scant,  Umberto Eco has always one high praise from authors I love.  His book, Baudolino, sits ready to be read by my recliner.  One of the most liberating ideas I've ever been introduced to is Eco's Antilibrary.  Originally relayed to me by Nassim Nicholas Taleb (a seminal statistician and philosopher also worth reading) in his classic book The Black Swan, I have tried to expound upon it ever sense.  Taleb describes the antilibrary concept (via Brain Pickings):

"The writer Umberto Eco belongs to that small class of scholars who are encyclopedic, insightful, and nondull. He is the owner of a large personal library (containing thirty thousand books), and separates visitors into two categories: those who react with “Wow! Signore professore dottore Eco, what a library you have! How many of these books have you read?” and the others — a very small minority — who get the point that a private library is not an ego-boosting appendage but a research tool. Read books are far less valuable than unread ones. The library should contain as much of what you do not know as your financial means, mortgage rates, and the currently tight real-estate market allows you to put there. You will accumulate more knowledge and more books as you grow older, and the growing number of unread books on the shelves will look at you menacingly. Indeed, the more you know, the larger the rows of unread books. Let us call this collection of unread books an anti library. [period was left in by me; I do not approve!]"

In essence, we must always remind ourselves of how little we do know, how much more we need to know, and the potential that we probably won't ever get there.  This is a menace you can smile at, for it is one that shows that knowledge is boundless, but that with the knowledge of all the books already created, in confluence with the understanding that countless others have made the intellectual contributions of the book, we know that there is the potential within to be bountiful.  Even the smallest of contributions can be life's bounty.  You will feel less bounty hunted when these realizations set in

So what might this have to do with meager end periods, you ask?  That period is a menace too.  It stares at the reader and screams "I'm final."  It dares you to try to have agency, saying "this, and only this, is imperative."  That imperative impairs our duty to continue the authorship, to be propulsive in thoughts.  The ideal author does not generate certitude, but a multitude of more thoughts

It closes the door on creation.  If the sentence is ended in a period, it's close-looped.  Nothing else can enter in.  No one else can author history, which is, after all, the sum of ideas.  It is ultimately a roadblock; or, as it sits on the page, a landmine in the way of progress.  In an increasingly diverse and global world, it exudes a hermetic hold on these ideas needed to advance humankind

If we kill the end period, then what shall replace it?  After hundreds of years being used in this way, how would we move forward?  How could it all make sense?

The scholar of Islam, Tariq Ramadan, is another author I've been introduced to but have yet to peer into his sea of ideas.  Recently, I opened his book, The Quest for Meaning, and just within his dedication, I was already finding fish.  He writes,

To the semi-colon; despite the diversity of languages, there is some form of punctuation that is universal and common to them all.  In a world of simplified communications and simplistic binary judgements, the semi-colon reconciles us with the plurality of propositions, and with the welcome nuance of the sentence and of complex realities

The choice is here to consciously decide to use more semi-colons and more commas to create worlds of possibility and to make dissonant thoughts become resonant.  The choice is here to use the exclamation point, to take pride and joy in our intellectual vigor and to transfer it unto others!  The choice is here to ask questions, for our anti-libraries are only to grow more menacing as we grow older; we can write as if the question mark is tattooed on our palms, constantly guiding our work.  Or we can choose to let it stream, to make the ultimate investment, and present the ultimate motion of trust, in our reader: that we have the capacity to create meaning together, and we will not do it without each other

I leave my thoughts and prayers with the end period's family.  May she rest most deeply and peacefully, a figment of a less enlightened time