A couple of years ago a group of us in my graduate program were shooting the breeze after class about children's names. One guy was telling us about this friend of his who was planning to incorporate punctuation into his future children's names, like Mark! and Mary?

Then, building on the theme of punctuation, my friend L. mentioned that she'd always thought air punctuation should move beyond just air quotes. She demonstrated how she would indicate parentheses (cupped hands held about a foot apart) and an exclamation point (draw a vertical line and stabbingly point forward).

Normally the guy who was telling us about the punctuated children names was a huge bore whose entire conversational repertoire consisted of relating everything back to Lacan. We'd thought he was showing signs of developing past that by finally relating a somewhat funny anecdote (Mark!...hee hee!), but naturally he couldn't sustain his roll, and as soon as L. had finished her air punctuation riff he began droning on and on about some Lacan thing again. About ten minutes later he finally trailed off and looked expectantly at us, waiting for some reaction to his brilliance.

After a moment of silence, L. coughed, "Um, anyway . . . " and stabbed three ellipsis dots into the air.