Consider This - "Punctuation...!!!"
HAHAHAHA!!!! When I first started writing I put exclamation marks after everything. In fact, sometimes I used two or even three!!!
I soon learnt (after one manuscript assessment) this was bad. The exclamation mark is just for the most extreme of cases (ie those times you want to put three exclamation marks). It reminds me of that moment in Seinfeld where Elaine Bennis is pulled up for putting too many exclamation marks in a final edit of a manuscript - Elaine Bennis, Mr Lippman & the exclamation point (if you want to see it - HILARIOUS!).
But, gee, there are so many punctuation marks and so many are used incorrectly. Lynn Truss has a lot to say about them in her fantastic and very funny book "Eats Shoots and Leaves", so I won't go over them. I refer back to that book so often and she makes everything so very clear - especially the use of the colon (:) and semi-colon (;) - but this quote (thanks to Wikipedia) certainly sums up the nature of punctuation:
"On the page, punctuation performs its grammatical function, but in the mind of the reader it does more than that. It tells the reader how to hum the tune."
Lynn Truss, Eats, Shoots and Leaves.
Another area I needed someone to point out was:
- The use of the ellipsis (...) = to indicate trailing off.
- The use of the Em-Dash (-) - the longer dash = used to indicate a change of abrupt through where a full-stop is too much and comma too little OR in speech to indicate that someone has been interrupted.
It can be easy to mix these up; using the ellipsis when someone has been interrupted or vice versa.
In fact, good punctuation around direct speech can make it disappear and allow the reader to just read the speech and not get caught up on the commas and inverted commas and full stops and capital letters. (As Lynn Truss says, "hum the tune".) The rules are quite straight forward but, sometimes, difficult to apply. There are quite a few good sites on the interweb that go over these but one that none cover is this:
- Only speech tags are put next to quotes with a comma. If a direction of activity is placed before or during speech, a full stop is used.
e.g.
Jenny placed her brush on the table. "What do you mean I'm not coming," she said.
OR
"Go through that door and take a left turn." John swiped a hand across his forehead. "And don't stop until you reach the red dog."
Good punctuating. By the way, I have to confess, I'm useless when it comes to using commas correctly in English. German is easy (they separate clauses). English rules are more like guidelines (in my humble opinion).
I soon learnt (after one manuscript assessment) this was bad. The exclamation mark is just for the most extreme of cases (ie those times you want to put three exclamation marks). It reminds me of that moment in Seinfeld where Elaine Bennis is pulled up for putting too many exclamation marks in a final edit of a manuscript - Elaine Bennis, Mr Lippman & the exclamation point (if you want to see it - HILARIOUS!).
But, gee, there are so many punctuation marks and so many are used incorrectly. Lynn Truss has a lot to say about them in her fantastic and very funny book "Eats Shoots and Leaves", so I won't go over them. I refer back to that book so often and she makes everything so very clear - especially the use of the colon (:) and semi-colon (;) - but this quote (thanks to Wikipedia) certainly sums up the nature of punctuation:
"On the page, punctuation performs its grammatical function, but in the mind of the reader it does more than that. It tells the reader how to hum the tune."
Lynn Truss, Eats, Shoots and Leaves.
Another area I needed someone to point out was:
- The use of the ellipsis (...) = to indicate trailing off.
- The use of the Em-Dash (-) - the longer dash = used to indicate a change of abrupt through where a full-stop is too much and comma too little OR in speech to indicate that someone has been interrupted.
It can be easy to mix these up; using the ellipsis when someone has been interrupted or vice versa.
In fact, good punctuation around direct speech can make it disappear and allow the reader to just read the speech and not get caught up on the commas and inverted commas and full stops and capital letters. (As Lynn Truss says, "hum the tune".) The rules are quite straight forward but, sometimes, difficult to apply. There are quite a few good sites on the interweb that go over these but one that none cover is this:
- Only speech tags are put next to quotes with a comma. If a direction of activity is placed before or during speech, a full stop is used.
e.g.
Jenny placed her brush on the table. "What do you mean I'm not coming," she said.
OR
"Go through that door and take a left turn." John swiped a hand across his forehead. "And don't stop until you reach the red dog."
Good punctuating. By the way, I have to confess, I'm useless when it comes to using commas correctly in English. German is easy (they separate clauses). English rules are more like guidelines (in my humble opinion).
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