This morning at breakfast I found this shining example of well-meaning punctuation that just — should I say it? — misses the mark. Granted, “Crunch!” (exclamation point and all) is part of the cereal name, but here it just looks like onomatopoeia. So for those of us who like to share our cereal with a special someone, we also get to enjoy dramatic sound effects. CRUNCH! Take that, non-lovers!

But I’m in my mid-to-late twenties and have been married for five years, so naturally people have been getting more and more curious about our childless state — more specifically, when we plan on remedying our childless state. As in, with a child. Some are more curious than others. (And more than our mothers, which if you ask me is a little weird.)

I’ve been asked the question numerous times over the last several years, by many different people. I don’t mind when some people ask. Yet others are quite off-putting. I hadn’t thought much about why that is.

It randomly occurred to me today that it must be the subtext — the invisible implications — that exists in the question when certain people ask, when worded a certain way. You can tell when I’m put off by your nosiness and you’re put off by my snark that now, now we’re really miscommunicating. It’s a beautiful, vicious downward spiral, all born of a relative stranger’s unnatural interest in my reproductive plans.

There’s the innocuous, “Are you planning to have kids?”

And then there’s, “When are you having kids?” or, “Are you going to start having kids soon?” and my all-time favorite, “Wow, all that working and going to grad school sure isn’t going to leave you with a lot of time to have kids!”

The first I can answer with a definitive, “yes,” which is all you need to know as far as I’m concerned. Yes, we plan to, but maybe we don’t know when, or if we can or will. But once you start digging for more, for juicy details, and asserting the assumption that two young, seemingly healthy, working adults would have nothing more important to do (or could want nothing more than) to have children — when you’ve gone there, you’ve breached that comfort zone and are heading straight for sarcastic retort land. We’re waiting for a wealthy benefactor, you see.

Of course I’m missing a lot of other important nonverbal clues — tone, inflection, physical expression — that help to imply one meaning or the other. Some people are harmless, and simply have trouble with the wording. It’s forgivable. The problem is that while the former suggests that I set my own baby-producing schedule, the latter seems to imply that I have but one purpose in life, and would I please just get on it already?

Especially if you’re a perfectionist.

Especially if you’re a perfectionist who writes a blog about miscommunication.

As I prepare for the final presentation of my master’s thesis project, I realized that I’ve become hypersensitive to what and how I communicate what I’ve done, why, and what it all means. If someone doesn’t get it, does that mean I’ve failed somehow? Aren’t I supposed to be the expert — a master — after all? So, what if I make a mistake? What if I’m not a perfect communicator?

As with any presentation, especially one with many “parts,” there are lots of ways to go wrong: the poster, the paper, the verbal explanations. The directions to get my family there. The clothes I wear. The crab dip.

Egad! It’s ironic when the fashion expert wears an unflattering color, when the neatnik leaves her socks on the floor, or when the chef burns the toast. Likewise, when the communication “expert” miscommunicates, does it do her discredit? There’s a certain paranoia that accompanies such displays of knowledge: will I be perfect enough?

After all, there is a guilty pleasure in observing and ridiculing the glaring mistakes of others (it’s sinfully delicious!); then we quietly and consciously evaluate our own behavior in order to avoid becoming the object of ridicule ourselves. I would know. Many of the miscommunications I’ve written about are things I’ve been guilty of. My goal has always been to avoid proselytizing, because I’m not a perfect communicator — far from it, in fact. But still, I’m pursuing a graduate degree in COMMUNICATION. Wouldn’t you expect to leave my presentation feeling like you fully understood my work? And if you just couldn’t grasp it, and I couldn’t figure out how to help you grasp it, wouldn’t you be pondering — and possibly ridiculing — the irony of that fact? Because I would. And then I’d come here and blog about it.

Anyway, my point is that in this case, it’s possible that miscommunication itself miscommunicates something about my ability to communicate. Unless miscommunication simply communicates my ability to miscommunicate, and if that’s true, then I no longer have any idea what I’m talking about. But at some point it was really profound.

I would, however, like to take a moment and follow up with the results of last week’s punctuation poll.

Of 80 participants, a resounding 60% agreed that under-punctuating is more misunderstandable, versus 34% who find that over-punctuating is more misunderstandable (and 6% who, like me, just couldn’t decide).

I’m still not sure which side I’m on, because I see the pros and cons of both. I’m sure much of it depends on the circumstance and my mood, but I think of the difference between the two in the same way as conversing with a person who uses very little variation in expression, tone and body language, as opposed to someone who’s exceedingly animated; in either case, the manifestation (or lack thereof) of non-verbal expression ends up obscuring the message rather than enhancing it. As punctuation goes, my natural preference is to look it up and get it right. But I’ll certainly think twice about the “When in doubt, leave it out!” rule from now on.

(P.S. – Thanks to everyone who spread the word about the poll. Participation was far beyond what I’d expected, and it made for a much cooler pie chart.)

It seems that for all the ways to get punctuation right in written English, there are three times as many ways to get it wrong. Some writers want to add more punctuation — anywhere, everywhere! Some writers just write and write and write without breaking up their sentences at all. In moderation, maybe it’s simply a reflection of personal style. But when taken to either extreme, it breeds misunderstanding.

And it leads me to just one question:

Is it more effective to miscommunicate by over-punctuating or under-punctuating?

On one hand, overwrought, abused, or otherwise misused punctuation mark’s, makes for “very” jolting, disrupted reading!!!! Its uncomfortable and irksome; for those of us who know better…not to mention, that it distracts (and detracts) from one’s message, there is no doubt about it’s misunderstandability…

On the other hand there are those who come from the land of Too Busy to Punctuate although in my experience they tend to also belong to the i dont need 2 capitalize club and everything is written stream of consciousness style with the supposed implication that we just know where the commas and periods are supposed to be and what sort of inflection or voice they intend which as we all know has its own set of miscommunication issues apart from the rules of English grammar

But I can’t decide which is more misunderstandable, so I thought I’d take a poll. What do you think? (You can share your thoughts in the comments, if you like.)

Here is one good reference on proper punctuation:

• Six Common Punctuation Errors that Bedevil Bloggers(from Copyblogger)

And two that make me laugh:

• Celebrity Grammar Rehab: Punctuation-Mark Edition(MSN Encarta)
• Commas, Turning Up, Everywhere (The Onion)

(Click for larger view)

(Click for larger view)

(Click for larger view)

They say that the invitation sets the tone for your wedding, because it’s the first official taste of the event that your guests will experience (that is, unless they’ve been keeping up with your wedding web site, wedding planning blog and monthly newsletters). As a graphic designer and frequent wedding guest, I fully agree. Yet, an alarming 87.5% of the wedding invitations that have made their way into my mailbox have been either (a) stylistically (as far as tone and formality) unrelated to the actual wedding event, (b) poorly executed in design and/or production, (c) overly precious, or (d) practically unreadable and/or unclear regarding event details. Invitation miscommunication is clearly a concept that not a lot of people understand. Or maybe all of my friends and relatives are supremely lacking in design savvy.

Nevertheless, having some expertise in the field of graphic design, and invitation design in particular, I’d like to offer some insight on the subject of invitation miscommunication. I’m not going to bore you with technical details about readability and legibility and typefaces and kerning and leading and color and line and balance, symmetry, unity, harmony, and postal regulations. Not yet, anyway, and only if you really want me to. Instead, I’m going to have some fun this week, and we’re going to look at what different wedding invitations might be unintentionally saying without actually saying what they’re saying, if you know what I’m saying.

But since no self-respecting suite of wedding stationery is complete without a Save-the-Date notice, let’s start there, shall we?

(Too small to fully appreciate? You can see it larger here.)