“Oh, how my momma needs a comma.*” Punctuation art at the Jeld-Wen Field stop on the Portland MAX line, Portland, OR, 28 May 2012.
My wife and I went out to the Rose Gardens in Portland for Memorial Day. On our way home, we transferred from the bus to the MAX light rail, and I spotted these punctuation marks in the stone. My wife kept wondering where the semi-colon was, but then she realized it was in the form of a bench, and suddenly we were seeing the punctuation marks everywhere! The whole stop was set up with these.
They even had parentheses bracketing a manhole.
I was having lots of fun just snapping photos, but when I spotted the hyphen, I had a brilliant idea:
Just in case anyone is unsure how to spell my last name**. 🙂
* The title I chose for this series comes from a line in a poem my wife wrote in college.
** Just to clarify: Yes, my last name is Snoek-Brown. My family name is Snoek, and my wife’s family name is Brown. We both hyphenated our last name. She’s a Snoek-Brown, and so am I.
Samuel Snoek-Brown 
I like hyphenated names – I have one too
Let’s hear it for the Snoek-Browns! Seriously, I love this post — a lot of whimsy and a little of the sweet. 🙂
I don’t have a hyphenated name, but there’s nothing to stop me from inserting one. It would add a bit of (uh) dash.