From Reader's Digest

CONVERSATION PIECES

If you would be a popular conversationalist, have a care to the punctuation in your talk. Keep out the colons, which mean subtopics to what you are saying; and avoid semicolons, which indicate after-thought; but put in plenty of periods, which show you're stopping. And especially use question marks, which invite the other person to start talking.

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   One night I was helping my third-grade son with his English assignment. "What is a noun?" I asked.
   "A person, place, or thing," he replied.
   I then asked, "What is a pronoun?"
   I could see the wheels turning in his head before he answered, "A really good noun."

Contributed by Mike Collins