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Penn Linguists Incensed Over New Movement to Drop Periods

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Photo by Joaquim Rocha / CC BY-SA 3.0

After rallying against a burgeoning wave of anti-punctuation sentiment, aficionados of the grammatically correct are celebrating a miraculous win. In the face of ardent protests, the University is buckling to public pressure and ending its experimental "drop period"—a time where students could spit in the face of hundreds of years of English language tradition and submit written assignments period-free with no repercussions. Proponents of the drop period have claimed that punctuation “is a artificial construct forced onto students that inhibits both creativity and communication in its highest form.”

Even advocates for the drop period admitted its shortcomings. Bert McCollum (C ‘20), an adamant hater of punctuation of all forms, told UTB that he supported doing away with the drop period. “Even though I hate having to worry about the different between things like commas and semicolons, I need to be able to make my periods 18-pt Times new Roman while the rest of my paper is in 12-pt Times new Roman. Punctuation might be an evil forced onto me be conceited grammarians, but I’ve gotta hit that page count minimum somehow.”

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