Mary Ann or Ginger

The girl next door or the voluptuous vamp? Cutesy or sexy? Short shorts or low-cut top? Exclamation point or question mark?

Through my punctuation-colored glasses, that’s how I see the Gilligan Island ladies. Mary Ann reminds me of the perky, straight-forward exclamation point and Ginger of the curvy, mysterious question mark.

How do you like your ladies and punctuation marks? Enthusiastic or elusive? Frisky or seductive?

It’s a tough one. I used to sway more Mary Ann when I was a kid, but as an adult, I can’t help but be seduced by Ginger’s beauty.

I am equally as torn over the punctuation marks.

I appreciate a good exclamation:

I’ve got tiger’s blood and Adonis DNA!

But I do also love myself a good question:

What the hell will Charlie Sheen say next?

So, instead of focusing on the differences, let’s focus on similarities.

Can we agree that both Mary Ann and Ginger are lovely women who displayed phenomenal foresight when they overpacked for a three hour excursion?

And did you know that both the question mark and exclamation point go inside the quotation marks when they apply to the quote, but outside the quotation marks when they apply to the actual sentence?

Here, I’ll show you.

In the following sentence, the quotation is a question, so the question mark goes inside:

I asked my friend, “Who do you like better, Gilligan or The Professor?”

And it’s the same with the exclamation point:

She said, "The Professor is so hot!"

In this sentence, the whole sentence is a question, so the question mark goes on the outside:

Didn't you love it when The Professor said brainy things like, "It was a geological phenomenon caused by volcanic activity beneath the Earth's surface resulting into concentration of heat at a specific location"?

And look- it’s the same with the exclamation point when the whole sentence is an exclamation:

I do like the part about "concentration of heat at a specific location"!