the end of punctuation

I'm a copywriter and I work in advertising. I've long since come to terms with Art Directors' resistance to include punctuation in headlines. "It looks funny", they insist. I get that they see letters as shapes, rather than the words themselves. And sometimes, on days when I'm feeling magnanimous or simply don't feel like banging my head against a brick wall, I'll let it go. Come to think of it, I have been known to suggest deleting an exclamation mark to improve the design (?) of a heading.

The longer you're in this game, the easier it becomes to choose your battles. And honestly, for those of you that believe Hollywood's interpretation of advertising, it's a lot less: the sexy Account Director comes up with the award-winning concept/ad with his kooky Art Director and bow-tie-and-tweed bedecked Copywriter let drowning in his charismatic wake; and more: creative teams going to work to ensure that the integrity of their work not only remains in tact, but also reflects their level of education and skill.

Which brings me to my point. I was proof-reading a booklet today when I noticed that 90% of the full stops were missing. Sometimes, when transferring copy from a word document to freehand, things "drop off". So I assumed that this was the case here. A nagging voice kept telling me to ask the copywriter on the job what the story was:

Me: Steph, there aren't any full stops in this booklet?

Steph: I know, client asked for them all to be removed.

Me: What?

Steph: She doesn't like full stops.

Me (thinking I'd not heard her correctly, she sits opposite me, so that's doubtful): WHAT?

Steph: She doesn't like full stops!

Me: Did you push back?

Steph: Yes, she insisted.

Annabel (another writer in the office): She did that with the X poster too.

Steph: Yes, and the Y campaign.

Me: (I'm speechless.)

You see, it floors me that our clients seem to think that they can do as they please with internationally-accepted (in the English-speaking world) rules of punctuation. It happened a year ago when I had included Em Dashes in my copy, which the client didn't like and changed to commas. I fumed about it for a couple of days and then let it go. I placated myself with soothing words like: She probably doesn't know what an Em Dash is. BUT NO FULL STOPS? Where does one draw the line? Someone's taking that email, where the letters of words are all jumbled but you can still make sense of is, a little too far. Call me a nerd. Call me punctilious. You can call me Al for all I care, just let me do my job. And if you're too worried about whether the information (what we call Body Copy) looks pretty, then don't let me work on your job, because clearly, there isn't a job for me to do. It PISSES me OFF. You don't see newspaper stories missing full stops, or textbooks for that matter. So why this?

I know that if I take up this fight, on a Friday, when Repro is waiting for the job bag, I'll be fighting alone. The teams will cast sympathetic glances in my direction but nothing will change or get done. So I'll comfort myself with this: Thankfully, when consumers read the booklet I've just handed back to Traffic in disgust, they'll blame the brand, and not the agency. (The thought of them not noticing the lack of full stops at all is just too terrifying to contemplate!)