Gertrude Stein, Tell Us What You Really Think...

This made us laugh today:

There are some punctuations that are interesting and there aresome punctuations that are not. Let us begin with the punctuations that are not. Of these the one but the first and the most the completely mostuninteresting is the question mark. The question mark is alright when itis all alone when it is used as a brand on cattle or when it could be used in decoration but connected with writing it is completely entirely com-pletely uninteresting. It is evident that is you ask a question you ask a question but anybody who can read at all knows when a question is a question as it is written in writing. Therefore I ask you therefore wherefore should one use the question mark. Beside it does not in its form go with ordinary printing and so it pleases neither the eye nor the ear and it is therefore like a noun, just an unnecessary name of some-thing. A question is a question, anybody can know that a question is a question and so why add to it the question mark when it is alreadythere when the question is already there in the writing. Therefore I never could bring myself to use a question mark, I always found it positively revolting, and now very few do use it. Exclamation marks havethe same difficulty and also quotation marks, they are unnecessary, they are ugly, they spoil the line of the writing or the printing and any-way what is the use, if you do not know that a question is a question what is the use of its being a question. The same thing is true of a quotation.