That’s our fervent hope, anyway. In the meantime, we’re sifting the nearly 150 entries into our write a letter to a punctuation mark contest. Mail call brought gladness to the ampersand, the grawlix, the Oxford comma, the underline, and everything (everyone? the marks have all been so brilliantly personified that we can no longer think of them as mere shapes on a page) in between. We’ll pick five top finalists this week and list them here, and we’ll want to hear what you think about it. Got a favorite entry? Have a beef to hoist? Tell us here!

As you know, the final finalist will get a signed and hand-punctuated copy of Ben Greenman’s new collection of stories, What He’s Poised to Do. Mr. Greenman will choose the top letter himself. May the best mark win! —Emily Gordon

Aristophanes of Byzantium, head of the Great Library of Alexandria in the 2nd century B.C., is considered by scholars to be the inventor of punctuation. Aristophanes created a scheme for notating texts that that included a proto-period, proto-comma, and proto-semicolon.

Aristophanes: this new recount of our punctuation contest, to win Ben Greenman’s new book, What He’s Poised to Do, is for you.

We have received many wonderful, creative, funny, sad, and inspiring letters. Ellipsis remains the leader with 16 letters of love… People love it a lot. Semicolon follows close behind with 12; semicolon is second but not secondary. The exclamation point is third!

The current high rankings:

Ellipsis: 16
Semicolon: 12
Exclamation Point: 9
Apostrophe: 8
Comma: 7

Emily Gordon writes:

A few stars—and we don’t mean asterisks—are emerging in our punctuation-addressing contest to win Ben Greenman’s new book, What He’s Poised to Do. Here are the rankings of letter recipients so far, out of 82 entries and counting. What does this say about these marks, or about us as a society? We don’t know. All we know is, some of these little symbols are coming home with an armful of valentines (and a little hate mail), and some are Charlie Brown, weeping into their sandwiches. If you’re for the underdog, as we generally are, take a moment to send a note to, say, the solitary slash, or, for that matter, the ubiquitous but apparently invisible backslash. Send a salami to your manicule in the army! Keep those cards and letters coming.

The current rankings (to be updated frequently for those placing bets):
Ellipsis: 10
Semicolon (which has withstood some harsh attacks in the past): 8
Apostrophe: 7
Exclamation Point: 7
At sign: 3
Ampersand: 3
Asterisk: 3
Colon: 3
Parentheses: 3
Period: 5
em dash: 2
Grawlix: 2
Interrobang: 2
Manicule: 2
Question Mark: 2
Tilde: 2

Tied with one piece of fan (or unfan) mail each: acute accent, air quote, at-the-price-of, bracket, bullet, comma, curly quote, diaeresis, dollar sign en dash, exclaquestion mark, hyphen, interpunct, interroverti (formerly the inverted question mark), macron, percent sign, pilcrow, pound sign, quotation mark, smart quote, underline, Oxford comma.

No postcards, no wedding invitations, no junk mail, no J. Crew catalogue, no nuthin’: backslash, bullet, caret, copyright symbol, dagger, dash ditto mark, degree, ditto mark, double hyphen, inverted exclamation point, guillemets, lozenge, number sign (number sign! that’s the hashtag you use so shamelessly!), the “therefore” and “because” signs, slash, solidus, and tie.

Here are some stark and potentially upsetting images of those characters who have received no mail. Can you look into their fragile strokes and deny them the notice they crave?

\ • © ^ ° † ‡ « » ＝ 〃 ⁀ ◊ ∴ ∵ ¡ # / ⁄

Note: We realize that some of these marks are really less punctuation than they are typographical elements. But since they’re getting letters, or we think they should, we’re including them.

Pollux writes:

“In the country of Westphalia… lived a youth whom Nature had endowed with a most sweet disposition. His face was the true index of his mind. He had a solid judgment joined to the most unaffected simplicity; and hence, I presume, he had his name of Candide.”

With these words, Voltaire pays tribute to his creation. The New York Public Library is now featuring an online exhibition for Voltaire’s Candide in which you can pay your own tribute to this 18th century work.

It’s not just any online gallery. This exhibition is calling all artists and readers to contribute their own visions, tributes, and adaptations of Candide. Here is the link for Do-It-Yourself-Candide. Have fun!

Martin Schneider writes:

A new issue of The New Yorker comes out today. It is the Cartoon Issue. A preview of its contents, adapted from the magazine's press release:

In this year's Cartoon Issue, "The Funnies" features cartoons by Pat Byrnes, Drew Dernavich, Matthew Diffee, William Haefeli, Bruce Eric Kaplan, Marisa Acocella Marchetto, Victoria Roberts, David Sipress, Mike Twohy, P. C. Vey, Christopher Weyant, and Jack Ziegler.

Chris Ware relates a family drama in a comic strip.

"I Don't Get It" explains some of the more obscure cartoons that have run in our pages.

Roz Chast envisions a social-networking site for the antisocial.

Zachary Kanin reveals the shocking truth about vampires.

Also, we introduce the Cartoon Kit Contest with "Talk Show," featuring drawings by