Computers were supposed to make the world easier. But what about the cyber waste? The computer experts repeatedly emphasize that nothing is truly deleted on computers. Thus, there must be debris orbiting something somewhere in cyberspace. This means the recycle bin for documents, photos etc. is a misnomer. Come to think of it, I have never truly recycled anything that ends up in that bin. I always end up emptying it – but into what?

An even more insidious trick is the deletion of punctuation. It’s so easy to simply highlight and delete a sentence or paragraph and it’s even more commonplace to backspace and send letters and punctuation to an invisible unknown rubbage pile no one ever mentions. This cyber trash heap is growing and expanding with the computerization of the world – and one of these days…

I understand that simply calling attention to something without a solution is basically fussing and whining. Therefore, I have come up with a solution to this wastefulness. Recycle. Truly recycle. Simply set up a file of recyclables in your computer labeled “extras”. A file for letters and symbols, another for punctuation, and so on. Sure it will take a little time to set this up, but just think of how you are protecting the invisible environment in the various storage clouds.

The idea is to copy/paste the commas, periods and other excess punctuation and put them in a document of “Extras”. Then when you need one, instead of creating a new one, simply open the “Extras” document, then cut/paste it into your new writing. This will minimize the cyberspace clutterization. The only problem I have encountered is the saving of spaces. Since they are invisible in the first place, a file of spaces has proved difficult to identify the spaces themselves, much less the size and font of the space. Until this has been solved I recommend the saving of the spaces in its own file until identification is possible.

Here are some possibilities for reusing and repurposing punctuation. Don’t throw commas out. They could be recycled as quotation marks, combined with periods for semi-colons, or repurposed as apostrophes, even accent marks and contraction creations.

If you accumulate too many of an item, you could sell them on Ebay or Craigslist. Perhaps make some clever display and post them on Pinterest. But please don’t just delete them.

I’m not even going to get into the heartless disposal of two’s and to’s, in favor of too’s. No more wastefulness! PLEASE!