Punctuation Frenzy

 


Welcome to Monday Blogs. Today, we’re going to concentrate on punctuation. You know, those very important commas, periods, exclamation points, question marks, colons, and semi-colons. They all have a place in our work but recently a trend has developed to leave off punctuation—puzzling, is the reader supposed to decide how you’re punctuating your sentence—or to use it either very sparingly or far too much, and you leave your reader confused.
Or an author may misuse punctuation, always ending dialogue with a comma, even if there isn’t a vocal tag after the comma and closing quote marks. They may separate items in a list with semi-colons instead of commas, when the semi-colon is only used to connect two independent clauses. Typically, you should use a colon before a listing of items, with commas separating those items. How about the author who sprinkles their work with question marks paired with exclamation points. Or they’ll use five or six exclamation points, because we are telling the reader they really have to get excited about this statement.
How do you avoid these pitfalls?
First, you need to learn the rules of punctuation. They can be a bit confusing, but once you take the time to figure them out, your book will read much better.
What are those rules?
First of all, ending sentences should only be with a period, question mark, or exclamation point. Unless that sentence is dialogue, and you’re adding a vocal tag to it.
Confused? Most people are at this point. Here is an example of properly ending sentences…
The dankness of the night wouldn’t stop her. She refused to let anyone keep her from enjoying her nightly walk.
That one was easy. Let’s look at dialogue…
“Get out of my way.” She walked around the creep. This is the proper way to show an action tag. Improperly would be if you did this: “Get out of my way,” she walked around the creep.
How about those mixes of exclamation points and question marks? Pretty tough to avoid that problem. We’re excited. We want our readers to be excited too…
“Are you kidding me?!” He shook his head.
This looks pretty neat. But it’s wrong. There’s no need for an exclamation point. From the wording of the sentence, the reader will understand the speaker’s emotions.
The recent trend I’ve seen of authors separating lists with semi-colons between each item instead of using commas has me shaking my head. It makes me wonder exactly what is being taught in English grammar classes. A sentence similar to this had an editor friend asking if we could ban semi-colons from books…
The list went on forever, doctor’s appointment; lab work; grocery shop; drop dog at vet; lunch with friend.
Very wrong, and unfortunately for the friend, she realized that we can’t ban semi-colons from books, but we can show the author how to correctly construct this sentence…
The list went on forever: doctor’s appointment, lab work, grocery shop, drop dog at vet, lunch with friend.
Other punctuation problems exist for authors and it is up to us to fix them before our book is published. Ideally, it’s up to us to fix them before we hire an editor or submit to a publisher. If you are uncertain exactly what to do, check out Chicago Manual of Style (CMOS). This is what most editors and publishers use for their main source of grammar questions.



About K.C. Sprayberry
Born and raised in Southern California’s Los Angeles basin, K.C. Sprayberry spent years traveling the United States and Europe while in the Air Force before settling in northwest Georgia. A new empty nester with her husband of more than twenty years, she spends her days figuring out new ways to torment her characters and coming up with innovative tales from the South and beyond.
She’s a multi-genre author who comes up with ideas from the strangest sources. Those who know her best will tell you that nothing is safe or sacred when she is observing real life. In fact, she considers any situation she witnesses as fair game when plotting a new story.
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