Just as every state has an official bird and Buick is the official car of the PGA tour, Michelob AmberBock the official beer of the
American Poolplayers Association, and Nandrolone the official anabolic steroid of the Olympics (well, maybe not officially the official
one), I think there should be an official punctuation of LGBT pride. It may seem strange to adopt an official punctuation, but then, it's
only in the past two or three years that United Speed Alliance Racing has adopted an official bratwurst and the Beta Sigma Phi
sorority an official fruit. (They are, respectively, Johnsonville and strawberries, in case your curiosity is killing you.) I will grant that, to
the best of my knowledge, no other organization or event has an official punctuation, but our community is all about trendsetting, and I
don't see any reason why we shouldn't be the first to declare an official punctuation.
The question is, Which punctuation mark? Now I, of course, have already put some thought into this, so let me bring you up to
speed. An obvious first choice might be the exclamation point but—too cliché, don't you think? The shrill, gaudy, drama queen of
punctuation marks.
Then I considered adopting the period, but that seemed representative of only half the community. The question mark has a nice
sinuous shape, but I think declaring it as ours plays right into the hands of homophobes. Colon and semicolon? Well let's just say
that's not my idea of a sexy choice, though if you were going to stretch a point (so to speak), you could claim it showed our intestinal
fortitude. But—nah. The hyphen and the solidus (or slash) are fine options in that they both join things into a unit, and I could vote for
either of them in good conscience were they in a run-off election with any of the aforementioned.
But it is to ellipsis dots that I find myself drawn above all other alternatives. ...
Why? Well, ellipsis points, according to The Chicago Manual of Style, 'suggest faltering or fragmented speech—have you ever
heard the average lesbian try to ask someone out on a date? 'Hey, uh ... um ... would you ... I mean ... are you ... will you ... um ...
would you like to go out sometime?' Ellipsis points are also used to indicate that words have been omitted from a quotation. This, to
me, says mystery: 'What thoughts remain unspoken?' 'What words have been left out?' There is a subtext, some sort of buried
treasure to be discovered—think of ellipsis points as subtler, more tasteful expressions of the excitement that the exclamation point so
screams. Also known as 'suspension points,' ellipsis dots are like a little bridge, the way Will & Grace is the little bridge between gays
and straights laughing and George Bush's presidency is the bridge between all of us crying. As for the visual effect of ellipses, it's
tantamount to a symbolic representation of 'parade,' all lined up nice and neat like that. Make your dots rainbow colored and, well,
need I say more? But something would hardly be worthy of the queer community if there wasn't potential for controversy. Ellipses
points have something to offer there, too. In an Internet article on punctuation, someone named Tina Blue (a drag queen? or just
naturally colorful?) claims that, 'while some writers use ellipsis points to indicate a trailing thought, that is a privilege reserved to those
who have already mastered the proper use of ellipsis points.' And people think feminists are uppity!
I said earlier that we are trendsetting, but let's face it, with an official mathematical symbol, an official geometric shape, an official
color, and an official spectral phenomenon already in place, it was just a matter of time before we had an official punctuation. [And
remember, HRC uses an equal sign.] And unlike those other showy representations of queerness, ellipsis dots have the potential to
do real work in the community, saving valuable time and space. Consider: 'I can't even ... straight.' 'A woman without a man ... .'
'We're here ... get used to it.' And hey: Happy Pride. ...
yz@press.uchicago.edu .
