Have you hugged a colon today?

Natalie Angier had a great article in the Times yesterday about cuteness. But pay close attention to the following sentence. Don’t worry, the first read-through is just a dry run.

The human cuteness detector is set at such a low bar, researchers said, that it sweeps in and deems cute practically anything remotely resembling a human baby or a part thereof, and so ends up including the young of virtually every mammalian species, fuzzy-headed birds like Japanese cranes, woolly bear caterpillars, a bobbing balloon, a big round rock stacked on a smaller rock, a colon, a hyphen and a close parenthesis typed in succession.

First, I’m all, "My detector isn’t set THAT low."

And then, I’m all, "Oh, I get it."

Remember, people, unambiguous punctuation is your friend. (By detailing panda feeding habits later in the article, Angier also comes dangerously close to reënacting the "eats, shoots, and leaves" offense that sparked a book of that name.)

But wait, you know what? Colons, the squishy kind, CAN be cute. The deuce says one thing, but the Dooce says another.