Hello (Exclamation Point)

I have a secret. Well, actually it is not such a secret to anyone who might have had occasion to read any of this. I am horrible at punctuation - there the secret is out! If a grade four teacher slapped a test in front of me and told me to put the commas in the right places, I would fail miserably. I over-use exclamation points, struggle with the semi-colon and employ heavy use of the dash. In short, "CP-style" is not my friend, in fact we are barely acquaintances. This is embarrassing on two counts - not the least of which is that I have spent most of my life joyfully writing and second, my sister was an English teacher for years before moving up the administrative ranks and it must cause her physical pain to read some of this. In my defence, when I worked in radio I started writing in a weird hybrid style - primarily to remind myself to breathe or pause when I was reading something on the air. Unfortunately, those habits failed to die as easily as the lessons I dutifully learned from my English teachers. So if you find it a distraction (!!!), my sincere apologies. In time I am sure I will find the appropriate support group, confess to the word police and move on - dashing all the way.