Even if it made skjerka crushingly unhappy, I'd still rather he didn't 'decorate'. Punctuation is a beautiful thing, but only when it isn't being figuratively raped.
. punctuation is a hegemonic tool undertheorized . using rape as an analogy is symptomatic of a patriarchial world-view that does work to maintain the status quo (the same kind of work reifying "rules" of grammar does)
I have a great deal of respect for punctuation, especially after reading who knows how many hundreds of student papers over the last 10 years. I cannot tell you how frustrating it is to spend several minutes with a sentence or paragraph trying to figure out what it means simply because it has too much punctuation or because it lacks punctuation that would have made its meaning clear on the first reading. Punctuation primarily offers clarity and meaning. I do love the writers who play with and challenge punctuation (and hey, let's bring back illuminated manuscripts!), but for prose that ought to be clear on a first reading and isn't, I'll go with standard/accepted punctuation rules every time.
Here's a classic example from my daughters' school newsletter that came home this month:
"If you didn't hand these forms in at the registration you may mail them directly to the school, or hand them in to the office starting the week of August 18."
Granted, there's not a lot of confusion in this sentence, but the lack of the comma after the first clause ("at the registration [
needs a comma here] you may mail") and the unnecessary comma later on caused me to have to read the sentence over three times 'til I understood it when I should have had to read it, nay, skim it, only once.