For the record, I do have a Twitter account. Then again, I haven’t posted a tweet for years. I have no followers and I don’t follow anyone on Twitter. And, no, I don’t have a blue verification mark on my account. You have to pay to get one of those. I haven’t spent much time on Twitter. If I had, I would have figured out how to delete my account. I’ll get around to that some day. Or perhaps I won’t. It isn’t at all important to me.

When I want to be spare with my use of language, I attempt to write poetry. I’m not a very good poet. In fact, I like to use Jess Walters’ description of his poetry. When asked about his poetry at a public forum he said, “I write bad poetry.” I think I also write bad poetry. Once in a while I write a poem that I like, but I’m no poet. What I write are essays and they are far too long to fit into a tweet.

Furthermore, I like to use a variety of different punctuation marks. In fact, I seek to use them correctly. As near as I can figure, the most popular function marks on twitter are exclamation points and there are quite a few writers of tweets who like to use a lot of them, ESPECIALLY WHEN THEY WRITE IN ALL CAPS!!!!!!

I do employ sentence fragments when I am using oral language, but I am less likely to do so when I write. One of the biggest flaws in my writing is that I can, on occasion, use extremely long run-on sentences to express rather simple concepts in cases where dividing the sentence into several shorter sentences would be more grammatically correct, and if not so, at least easier to read.

I try to make it a point to use punctuation in my text messages, but I have noticed from the text messages that I receive that the use of punctuation other than exclamation points is fairly rare. I believe that using comas, periods, and the occasional semi-colon or colon makes my writing seem more serious. Then again, I doubt that many people remember that back in the 1960s Marvel Comics used exclamation points as the default way to end a sentence. It didn’t matter who was speaking of what the subject matter was. There were just no periods in early Marvel Comics. One theory is that periods would become lost during the printing process. The larger exclamation marks were more visible. Whatever the reason, during the 1970’s Marvel Comics became hesitant. Writers were told to cut back on them, because they were seen as part of juvenile writing. Marvel Comics was trying to appeal to adult readers. If you look at comic books today, however, the exclamation point is definitely back in popularity. However, I think that the overuse of exclamation points makes writing appear more comical.

As long as I’m on the subject of exclamation marks, I guess I should note that a small community in Quebec is in the Guinness World Records. The municipality of Saint-Louis-du-Ha!-Ha!, located on the south shore of the St. Lawrence River, about 250 km northeast of Quebec City is on page 161 of the 2018 edition of the book of records as the only community in the world with two exclamation marks in its name. As far as I know, the designation of Rapid! City! South! Dakota! has not caught on in an attempt to break the record.

What surprises me is that I’m already over 600 words into a 1,000-word essay and I have become sidetracked on exclamation points when I meant to write about the fact that the new operating system on my phone has a host of new emoji. The thing is that I rarely use emoji, feeling that it is easier to write out my feelings, using correct punctuation, than trying to select an image from a list. Exactly what emotion is a hair pick supposed to express? What does it mean if I send maracas to my daughter?

I like ginger. I use a lot of the spice in cooking. I add ginger to my oatmeal for breakfast. But I didn’t recognize the ginger emoji until I had someone explain it to me. I thought it was just some nondescript root. I get the pea pod, but I doubt that I’ll ever use it. And I’m not sure how often I will use the hyacinth emoji now that the hyacinth in our yard died, perhaps as the result of over-aggressive pruning. I’m trying to think of what to plant in its place. I need something to shield the cluster of Internet cable boxes in the side yard. I suspect that I’ll chose another plant. I don’t think that there is an emoji for bougainvillea. I don’t intend to plant bougainvillea. I just like the name.

No one has explained to me why there are emoji for flute, saxophone, guitar, violin, trumpet, banjo, and drum, but so far as I can discern, there is no emoji for oboe or bassoon. Do you suppose that there is an implicit bias against double reed instruments? Of course I get the banjo. There are a lot of pretty funny banjo jokes, although I’ve never found one that my banjo-playing friend has not already heard before I told it to him.

I also cannot think of an occasion that might prompt me to use the moose emoji. After all yesterday was Palm Sunday and I didn’t employ the donkey emoji even one time. Chances of me even remembering that there is a jellyfish emoji are pretty slim.

I read that there are over 3,600 emoji. I definitely don’t have 3,600 feelings that I need to express. I’m pretty sure that I don’t know the meaning of at least half of the emoji that do exist. Can you tell me what "👠🦝 🍔" means? Sometimes I just send a string of random emoji to my sister for no reason at all. It usually confuses her.

So, I guess I’m going to stick with trying to master punctuation. I used to be pretty good at it when I was in elementary school, but I still make mistakes. I’ll leave the emoji to others.