That's how it goes
Mar. 21st, 2011 11:26 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
kkscatnip
It seems like such a basic thing, but at times punctuation can be complicated and it's important to know the rules and try to moderate your instincts. So, do you know the rules? I read through them and realized that I was doing a few things wrong, myself!
I highly, highly recommend everyone take a look, as it tells you what the standards are in the English language. Not that you have to follow these standards completely, but it's best that you know the rules if you're going to break them.
While I'm on the subject of punctuation: the interrobang, this fancy little number: ?! and !?. I'm not going to say that you should never use one, but I am going to say this: the more stories I see with them, the less I enjoy them. Use them, if you must, but don't use them thoughtlessly!
You can convey a more realistic sense of confused energy with words than you can with punctuation. I consider an interrobang a form of telling (as opposed to showing) and telling is something you want to generally avoid in stories, especially when the emotions run high and you want to have an impact on your readers.
Ahem, now that's done, I shall continue with the original intent of the post: everyone has certain punctuation that they end up relying on, for one reason or another.
I'm not talking about when one passage has a lot of questions because someone's confused, the next has a lot of exclamations because it's a shouting match, and the final passage has a lot of ellipses because the characters are out of breath. These are all examples of certain types of punctuation being relied upon because of the mood they convey; if you are tailoring the punctuation to the scene then you are doing a good job!
What I am talking about is, when you do a ctrl+f on your document and find, oh, 62 instances of an ellipsis. Or 47 instances of a dash. Or 96 semicolons-- all in a story that's, oh, let's say 7,000 words or so.
That means that, on average, every 149 words, there's a dash. Every 113 words, there's an ellipsis. Every 73 words there's a semicolon. If you want a measuring stick for exactly how much text that isn't, the above two paragraphs, the ones that start with "I'm" and "What," together are 126 words.
My own go-to punctuation is the dash. I use it to do all sorts of things--no matter what I'm writing. I nearly always ends up having to go through the story at one point or another and evaluate whether I really need dashes there or not. For instance, in the piece I'm working on right now, which is 52,000 words long, I've used it 489 times. That means that I use it every 106 words or so. I obviously need to go through this story and evaluate whether or not these dashes are essential!
Since I am aware of that tendency, I can fix it. I can replace dashes with semicolons, with commas, or even separate it into two sentences.
So I'll ask you-- what are your go-to punctuation elements? What do you find yourself using over and over? I guarantee you that everyone has these, and it's important to be cognizant of your own, so figure out what yours are! And better yet, figure out how to fix them.
I highly, highly recommend everyone take a look, as it tells you what the standards are in the English language. Not that you have to follow these standards completely, but it's best that you know the rules if you're going to break them.
While I'm on the subject of punctuation: the interrobang, this fancy little number: ?! and !?. I'm not going to say that you should never use one, but I am going to say this: the more stories I see with them, the less I enjoy them. Use them, if you must, but don't use them thoughtlessly!
You can convey a more realistic sense of confused energy with words than you can with punctuation. I consider an interrobang a form of telling (as opposed to showing) and telling is something you want to generally avoid in stories, especially when the emotions run high and you want to have an impact on your readers.
Ahem, now that's done, I shall continue with the original intent of the post: everyone has certain punctuation that they end up relying on, for one reason or another.
I'm not talking about when one passage has a lot of questions because someone's confused, the next has a lot of exclamations because it's a shouting match, and the final passage has a lot of ellipses because the characters are out of breath. These are all examples of certain types of punctuation being relied upon because of the mood they convey; if you are tailoring the punctuation to the scene then you are doing a good job!
What I am talking about is, when you do a ctrl+f on your document and find, oh, 62 instances of an ellipsis. Or 47 instances of a dash. Or 96 semicolons-- all in a story that's, oh, let's say 7,000 words or so.
That means that, on average, every 149 words, there's a dash. Every 113 words, there's an ellipsis. Every 73 words there's a semicolon. If you want a measuring stick for exactly how much text that isn't, the above two paragraphs, the ones that start with "I'm" and "What," together are 126 words.
My own go-to punctuation is the dash. I use it to do all sorts of things--no matter what I'm writing. I nearly always ends up having to go through the story at one point or another and evaluate whether I really need dashes there or not. For instance, in the piece I'm working on right now, which is 52,000 words long, I've used it 489 times. That means that I use it every 106 words or so. I obviously need to go through this story and evaluate whether or not these dashes are essential!
Since I am aware of that tendency, I can fix it. I can replace dashes with semicolons, with commas, or even separate it into two sentences.
So I'll ask you-- what are your go-to punctuation elements? What do you find yourself using over and over? I guarantee you that everyone has these, and it's important to be cognizant of your own, so figure out what yours are! And better yet, figure out how to fix them.
