Kindle Rewards BONUS: 2x Points Today and an Apostrophe Your Ancestor Never Got

Today is National Punctuation Day. Naturally, the same date carries a Kindle Rewards bonus. I’m choosing to believe the universe has a sense of humor.

Kindle Rewards BONUS: The Offer, in Amazon’s Own Words

Here’s the notice:

The Amazon Kindle Rewards loyalty program is offering 2x points Thursday September 24th, 2026! Earn 2x Kindle Points on Kindle books purchased on September 24, 2026 between 12:00 AM and 11:59 PM PDT. With Kindle Rewards, you earn Kindle Points for every dollar spent on books and from bonus offers. Terms and conditions apply.

One day only. The window closes at 11:59 PM PDT tonight, so don’t dawdle.

Now, a detour. Dates and details matter, whether it’s a sale window or a 1930 census page.

Kindle Rewards BONUS: How One Missing Apostrophe Buries a Great-Grandfather

Picture a hypothetical. You’re hunting Timothy O’Sullivan, a laborer in New York, around 1930. The enumerator’s pen left a wobbly gap where the apostrophe should sit. The indexer, squinting at a photocopy of a microfilm of a page that has seen things, types “O Sullivan.”

Now the database gets involved. Databases are literal creatures. To one of them, “O” is a person and “Sullivan” is a different person, and your search for O’Sullivan returns nothing. Timothy is sitting right there, in the record, wearing a disguise made of one missing character.

You blame the census taker. Everybody does. Was it his fault, or the indexer’s? Probably some of each, and it doesn’t matter, because the only person who can fix it is you. Try “O Sullivan.” Try “OSullivan.” Punctuation hides people.

I wrote a whole article on this called National Punctuation Day: Transcription Errors That Hide Your Ancestor From Every Search. Go read it. I’ll wait. (Bring a beverage. You’ll want to check your own tree afterward.)

Kindle Rewards BONUS: Kindle Books Worth Doubling Your Points On

I’ll start with my own shelf, since I know where the bodies are buried. Every title below is available on Kindle, so it’s a candidate for today’s double points. Check the terms.

• Microsoft Word for Genealogists (2026 Edition): for anyone who types up research in Word and would like the software to stop fighting back.
• Best AI Prompts for Genealogy Research (2026 Edition): AI will transcribe a handwritten record with total confidence and questionable commas. Verify everything.
• The Genealogy Do-Over Workbook (2026): for the moment you admit the old research was sloppy and decide to redo it properly.
• The 15 Habits of Highly Frugal Genealogists: written for bargain hunters, which today includes all of us.

Want the whole catalog? Browse all my Kindle books here.

Kindle Rewards BONUS: Best-Selling Genealogy Books From Other Authors

Sloppy research has a cure, and it comes with footnotes.

• Evidence Explained by Elizabeth Shown Mills: the citation bible. Every serious researcher owns it or wishes they did.
• Mastering Genealogical Proof by Thomas W. Jones: for when “my cousin’s tree says so” stops being good enough.
• Genealogy Standards from the Board for Certification of Genealogists: the rulebook, in case you enjoy rules.
• Unpuzzling Your Past by Emily Anne Croom: a longtime favorite for beginners.
• Eats, Shoots & Leaves by Lynne Truss: the punctuation classic, with the panda on the cover. Required reading today.

Kindle editions vary by title, so check each listing for the Kindle format before you count on those double points.

Kindle Rewards BONUS: Punctuation Gear (No Points, Plenty of Smugness)

Physical merchandise doesn’t earn Kindle Points, since the offer covers Kindle books. But a National Punctuation Day t-shirt will announce your standards to every room you enter, and a grammar-lover gift makes an excellent present for the relative who corrects your text messages.

Somewhere in a database right now, an ancestor is waiting behind a stray apostrophe. What finds him? Nothing clever. Just a researcher stubborn enough to try one more spelling.

Kindle Rewards BONUS: Go Grab Your Points

The clock runs out at 11:59 PM PDT. Click through my Amazon Associate links above to explore my Kindle books and the other National Punctuation Day finds while the double points last. Then go check your tree for missing apostrophes.

As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases.

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Author’s Note: I want to be transparent that this content – Kindle Rewards BONUS: 2x Points Today and an Apostrophe Your Ancestor Never Got – was created in part with the help of an artificial intelligence (AI) language model – Claude Sonnet 5. The AI assisted in generating an early draft of the content, but every paragraph was subsequently reviewed, edited, and refined by me. The final content is the result of extensive human curation and creativity. I am proud to present this work and assure readers that while AI was a tool in the process, the story, style, and substance have been carefully shaped by the author.