Δαφνη Ευτυχια Αρθουρος

a) Ooh, I like the idea of an inscribed clue-by-four -- with raised letters, reversed so that the bruise will show the message forwards.

b) I agree in general, but ... There. Are. Exceptions. (Hmm. Is that using the period as a rest, or as a staccato mark? That ellipsis would be a fermata.) There is a music to language, and when trying to convey the music of the spoken word in writing, punctuation -- used technically correctly or wilfully abused to suit the purpose -- can be a useful tool in that endeavor. (For example, my choice of em-dashes instead of commas in the preceeding sentence (though I approximated them with doubled hyphens instead of bothering to insert the HTML —, "—", which choice is the subject of a separate, tangential, discussion on typography).) That said, for the perversion of punctuation to be really effective, it has to be done at useful times and in useful ways as a deliberate choice, not willy-nilly through ignorance. And any such trick, used gratuitously, gradually grows grating, I'll grant. Overuse destroys the effect.