ARI SHAPIRO, HOST:
Kelly, I am so sorry.
KELLY MCEVERS, HOST:
What?
SHAPIRO: I forgot to wish you a happy Punctuation Day, exclamation point.
MCEVERS: What - question mark, exclamation point.
SHAPIRO: I think you mean interrobang - used when messaging a friend about, like, a date, for example.
CHOIRE SICHA: Like, she's wandered off, and she has forgotten to tell you whether she made out with the person she was out with last night. You know what I mean? Like, you're going to be like, well, and then - interrobang.
MCEVERS: (Laughter). That's Choire Sicha, everybody. He is the co-founder of the culture blog The Awl. The New Yorker once said he wielded the power to change language.
SHAPIRO: And we needed him because some of our colleagues here at ALL THINGS CONSIDERED thought the period was still cool. Like, oh, I'm looking at one at the end of this sentence. Get this away from me.
SICHA: There's just whole groups of people who just don't even use a period anymore. And it just feels so free. It's like everything's a poem.
MCEVERS: Like texting. Sicha says teens are punctuating our future.
SICHA: There's some 18-year-old girl now out there who is pretty much solely responsible for the way we speak, talk and write.
SHAPIRO: Right now the asterisk is totally where it's at. Take this tweet from an account named Cool Pond.
SICHA: Asterisk - interrupt friends, asterisk. Quote, "You got to hear this tweet, OK?" And then asterisks, realizes tweet starts with action, asterisks, and doesn't know how to read that out loud.
MCEVERS: If that made no sense to you either, The Awl's Choire Sicha says you're not alone.
SICHA: I'm very, very old.
SHAPIRO: #lolz, spelled with a Z. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
