Today is National Punctuation Day, though you wouldn’t know it skimming through friends’ e-mails, perusing students’ book reports and reading shop signs and advertisements. The sad fact is we are a nation of punctually illiterate scribblers, not knowing a comma from a colon. Still worse is that we don’t really care, and I’d wager that an alarmingly large number of us are even proud of our glaring educational deficit.

Thanks to journalist Jeff Rubin, there’s now a national day intended to do more than merely fill the coffers of Hallmark, Godiva, FTD et al, and his web site makes us aware that there’s more to punctuation than ejaculating three exclamation marks at the end of every sentence. (Note: Two will suffice; I’m not deaf.)

If you simply can’t overcome that national-day urge to buy something to honor it, then stop by his “Punctuation Products” page for clever t-shirts and coffee mugs. Or cook a Punctuation Meat Loaf instead of buying yet another round of doughnuts for the office. Your colleagues will thank you.

Now if someone would just introduce a National Spelling Day, I could read my e-mails without a red marker.

When it comes to excess and exaggeration, we Americans are peerless. If we want to get from Suburb A to Suburb B, we buy a nine-seater SUV in case we need to give hitchhiking mountaineers a lift to the nearest base camp along our route. Should we envy those mountaineers their athletic physique, we mail a fat check to Atkins Incorpulated or beeline to the liposuction clinic in place of sensible eating and evening strolls. And when choosing our soap, we turn our noses up at the mild scent of humble Ivory and reach instead for the weapons-grade, germ-vaporizing, antibacterial nostrum on the top shelf. Why the hygienic hyperbole? Because mainstream America has a pavlovian reflex to marketing fads. Because no matter how ludicrous a solitary suburbanite looks behind the helm of a sloth utility vehicle, no matter how absurd the idea of ostracizing an entire food group from our already unhealthy eating habits sounds, and no matter how many times we learned in high school bio class that the human body needs certain living organisms crawling over its skin, the second we see those credible images and hear that persuasive voice on the TV screen, we willingly surrender any remaining critical thinking skills not already taken prisoner.

Research at the University of Michigan has determined that antibacterial soaps are not more effective than conventional soaps.

Now if you hurry, there’s still time to drive to the store for your very own environmentally friendly solar power flashlight - while supplies last. Because Mother Earth needs us, and time’s running out….