Punctuation Plus

Leave it to a Yale University history major to use a punctuation metaphor in describing the death, destruction and destabilization in Iraq.

English teachers consider the comma to be the punctuation mark with which people have the most trouble. I think President Bush would agree.

Yesterday, CNN aired an interview in which the president explained to Wolf Blitzer, "I like to tell people when the final history is written on Iraq, it will look like just a comma because there is -- my point is, there's a strong will for democracy. ... The unity government is functioning."

I'm not going to jump all over the Commander in Chief for implying that the deaths of 2600 American troops and Allah knows how many Iraqis will be viewed merely as an historical hiccup. Rather, I am focused on other important issues raised by W's uncanny ability to be on the money off the cuff.

How big, in historical terms, is a comma? I mean, we've got "Fly in the ointment" which is trumped by "Bump in the road" which seems less significant than "Blip on the radar screen," but I don't know where "comma" falls in the pecking order.

I'm not even sure how the comma stacks up amongst its brothers-in-punctuation. Obviously, the semicolon sits at the bottom of the hierarchy; after all, it's half of a colon. As award winning author Cormac McCarthy has demonstrated time and again, quotation marks are no longer necessary. Next comes the dash, which has a lot of flair, but little oomph - I mean, who uses dashes anymore outside of phone numbers? The easily-niched colon is followed by the under appreciated apostrophe (possession is 9/10th of the law, don't forget). And then there were three. Although there's nothing like a well-placed ! to drive home a point, the question mark gets the Vice President slot due to its much more frequent usage. In this time of uncertainty, I'm giving the top spot to the always dependable, never misconstrued period.

Since the President is so comfortable peppering conversation with punctuation points, I wonder if he has embraced the use of emoticons in cyberspace. For instance, did he email Mike Brown last September \' ) (wink)? Maybe he uses l-<> (puckered for a kiss) to sign emails to Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice.

And what about acronyms? Does Dubya hit Tony Snow with an LOL after a particularly jocular press conference? Perhaps the President responds to criticisms of his policies with NBIF (No Basis In Fact). Surely, he is not familiar with ITRW (In The Real World).

President Bush assures us that future historians will depict the Iraq Era as a "comma" in the pages of history. At this point, he should hope those texts don't designate his two terms in office with an *

What would the asterisk indicate?