Punctuation

Q. Why do people feel the need to add punctuation to their organization names? I am editing a blog post about a local coalition that has named itself with a word (let’s say it’s “Believe”) followed by an exclamation point. To refer to the coalition by name, the only option seems to be leaving off the exclamation point, correct? Otherwise, it makes for an excessively clumsy sentence that makes no sense at first: “Believe! thinks this legislation is a great idea.”

A. People add punctuation to names when they want to be creative but are bad at it. Readers are actually getting used to this device, however, so it probably won’t cause a problem. Keep the punctuation while making sure that the context provides help to the reader. For instance, avoid putting the organization’s name at the end of a sentence like “The attorneys filing the lawsuit doubt that the contract was broken; although they have never visited the organization, tomorrow they are going to Believe!”