for some reason a statement can become a bit funnier if there isnt any punctuation at the end compare the following
- Oh, my God! That is the most amazing thing I've ever seen!
- oh my god that is the most amazing thing ive ever seen
Whereas the first one is grammatically correct, with punctuation in all the right places, the second has no punctuation. The reason the one without punctuation could possibly be funnier to you is that punctuation implies inflection. Without punctuation, the statement gives off the feeling that it was said in an emotionally blank voice, akin to the Flat "What". Alternately, it might come across as breathless, as if the speaker was so excited their comments came out too quickly for punctuation. And, in particular, without the pauses denoted by commas.
The phenomenon is common on the internet, where people seem to often forget that a keyboard has keys for periods and commas. In that respect, people might also associate punctuation-bereft sentences with those inexperienced with computers, adding another possible source for amusement. It's also used to suggest a silly point of view in an enthusiastic-but-not-too-bright manner, often with All Caps (another sign of being unfamiliar with computers): HEY THIS IS THE BEST PAGE ON THE WIKI
Compare Wanton Cruelty to the Common Comma and The No Punctuation Period, where the poor grammar is a source of annoyance rather than amusement. Contrast Nothing Is Scarier, where the lack of something invokes fear rather than humour. See Motor Mouth for dialogue equivalents.
examples
- Peanuts often did this after its more conventionally-punctuated first decade.
- Unintentionally(?), My Immortal.
- In Dream High School, Corliss rants breathlessly to the protagonist about how she looked up to her in first grade. She does have a comma at the end of her paragraph-long spiel, though.
- Eats, Shoots & Leaves tells the tale of an unwanted comma:
Back at The New Yorker, Thurber tells the story of "the grison anecdote" — a story about a soap salesman who belatedly spots a grison (a South American weasel-like carnivore) on a porch in New Jersey. Now, Thurber says he commanded [his editor] Ross not to change a word of this piece, but he was obviously asking for trouble. "It preserves the fine texture of the most delicate skin and lends a lasting and radiant rosiness to the complexion my God what is that thing?" says the salesman. Ross, of course, inserted a comma after "my God". He just couldn't help himself.
- The molesworth stories lean very hard on this as a source of humor. Note that they are written in the voice of an under-achieving schoolboy, so this is entirely justified.
- The poem, next to of course god america i by E. E. Cummings has a windbag delivering a rambling 13-line speech that way.
- Jackass has most, if not all of the text for their stunts lowercased (e.g., "golf course airhorn" or "the high five").
Johnny Knoxville: hi im johnny knoxville and welcome to jackass!
- This newsreader
learned an important lesson about vetting his Autocue script for proper grammar before making a live broadcast.
- Part of Christopher Walken's unique style is that he ignores the punctuation in his scripts and just goes with what he likes. Lampshaded to hell and back on an SNL appearance, where he sang "Tomato/Tomah-toe" without ever actually altering his pronunciation. After all, it was spelled as-normal on the cue cards.
- Muse magazine once printed a fan letter that started out with her complaining that they never print any of her letters. Then she wrote that she loved the mag and requested a couple of article subjects, all without any punctuation or even spaces. The editors gave a reply that had punctuation but no letters.
- Queen From Deltarune Speaks With Every First Letter In Each Word Capitalised She Rarely Uses Punctuation And She Adds Brackets For Certain Words (Like This) As Well As Adding Colons For Certain Nouns As She Is: A Computer
- In Fruit Mystery, the protagonist is completely insane and likes feeding human foods to zoo animals, often with deadly consequences, which is Played for Laughs. After feeding a zoo animal, a window pops up for the protagonist to tell you what happened, and his writing is full of grammatical errors, little punctuation, misspelled words, and some words are randomly in all caps.
- In Going Under, Swomp's dialogue lacks both punctuation and capitalization, to add to his spacey nature.
- Pikuniku: Most of the dialogue is in all lowercase and without punctuation.
- This trope is part of what makes Pokémon Vietnamese Crystal so funny. The game is a "Blind Idiot" Translation of Pokemon Crystal Version, and the frequent grammatical errors and misspelled words only make the nonsensical dialogue even more mind screw-y and hilarious.
- Sans from Undertale speaks in all lowercase letters, with haphazard use of punctuation, to underscore his nature as a Mellow Fellow.
- Zero Punctuation occasionally includes little bits of text (to represent characters talking) in the visuals as jokes. True to the name of the show, these are always in ALL CAPS with no punctuation.
- Roast Beef in Achewood. As he's the only character who does it, but does it consistently, it gives him a distinct voice: as though he's speaking kinda quietly and with hell of digressions and every sentence just trailing off no proper endings at all
- BOTH GOD AND THE DEVIL IN DINOSAUR COMICS ALWAYS SPEAK IN BOLD ALL-CAPS WITH NO PUNCTUATION
- This contributes to the snarkiness of several Homestuck characters, particularly Kanaya and Dave. Dave gets bonus points for also not capitalizing anything.
- At Myths Retold, myths get retold in this style.
- Game Grumps: Dan mentions that Arin's infamous texts ranting about The Social Network and Jesse Eisenberg contain, in Dan's words, "No punctuation. Random capitalisations."
- Most, if not all, of ProZD's videos are titled without punctuation.
