Uncle Sandy

The local newspaper printed an article when my grandma passed away, the author wrote about my grandma's incredible life and told of her passing to thousands of people. She was an amazing woman and loved by many people. My mom told me stories from her childhood about her three sisters and two brothers. I recently came across a document in a public domain that listed a third brother. I had never heard of my Uncle Sandy. My mom denied the idea of a third brother or a secret family. The obituary that had been written at the time of my grandma’s death had one small mistake; here was a comma in the place of a semicolon. This small error in the obituary has given my mom a third brother: Dave, Walter, and Sandy.  Obituaries often say who the survivors of the deceased are with their hometowns listed. Uncle Dave lives in Sandy, a suburb of Salt Lake City but because of the typo I now have an Uncle Sandy listed as my mom's brother. When I first discovered this I almost believed that maybe there really is an Uncle Sandy that I've never met or was so rotten they never spoke of him. Just imagine the secret I thought I discovered.

Writing is important, we are adding to history when we write or create. We need to be accurate and that includes the little things including punctuation. The NES text makes it seem so simple, if we could only remember all the rules. They really are simple and easy to forget.

As teachers, we will all have at least one student who will ask why they have to learn grammar and punctuation because the student might not want to be a writer, but everyone writes especially with social media being such a big deal. You want to say what you mean or you might end up splitting an inheritance with Uncle Sandy, whoever he is.