Notes on Punctuation

[Perd Hapley]

An old chestnut for your amusement.

Notes on Punctuation
by Lewis Thomas

There are no precise rules about punctuation (Fowler lays out some general advice (as best he can under the complex circumstances of English prose (he points out, for example, that we possess only four stops (the comma, the semicolon, the colon and the period (the question mark and exclamation point are not, strictly speaking, stops; they are indicators of tone (oddly enough, the Greeks employed the semicolon for their question mark (it produces a strange sensation to read a Greek sentence which is a straightforward question: Why weepest thou; (instead of Why weepest thou? (and, of course, there are parentheses (which are surely a kind of punctuation making this whole matter much more complicated by having to count up the left-handed parentheses in order to be sure of closing with the right number (but if the parentheses were left out, with nothing to work with but the stops we would have considerably more flexibility in the deploying of layers of meaning than if we tried to separate all the clauses by physical barriers (and in the latter case, while we might have more precision and exactitude for our meaning, we would lose the essential flavor of language, which is its wonderful ambiguity )))))))))))).

The commas are the most useful and usable of all the stops. It is highly important to put them in place as you go along. If you try to come back after doing a paragraph and stick them in the various spots that tempt you you will discover that they tend to swarm like minnows in all sorts of crevices whose existence you hadn’t realized and before you know it the whole long sentence becomes immobilized and lashed up squirming in commas. Better to use them sparingly, and with affection, precisely when the need for each one arises, nicely, by itself.

I have grown fond of semicolons in recent years. The semicolon tells you that there is still some question about the preceding full sentence; something needs to be added; it reminds you sometimes of the Greek usage. It is almost always a greater pleasure to come across a semicolon than a period. The period tells you that that is that; if you didn’t get all the meaning you wanted or expected, anyway you got all the writer intended to parcel out and now you have to move along. But with a semicolon there you get a pleasant little feeling of expectancy; there is more to come; to read on; it will get clearer.

Colons are a lot less attractive for several reasons: firstly, they give you the feeling of being rather ordered around, or at least having your nose pointed in a direction you might not be inclined to take if left to yourself, and, secondly, you suspect you’re in for one of those sentences that will be labeling the points to be made: firstly, secondly and so forth, with the implication that you haven’t sense enough to keep track of a sequence of notions without having them numbered. Also, many writers use this system loosely and incompletely, starting out with number one and number two as though counting off on their fingers but then going on and on without the succession of labels you’ve been led to expect, leaving you floundering about searching for the ninethly or seventeenthly that ought to be there but isn’t.

Exclamation points are the most irritating of all. Look! they say, look at what I just said! How amazing is my thought! It is like being forced to watch someone else’s small child jumping up and down crazily in the center of the living room shouting to attract attention. If a sentence really has something of importance to say, something quite remarkable, it doesn’t need a mark to point it out. And if it is really, after all, a banal sentence needing more zing, the exclamation point simply emphasizes its banality!

Quotation marks should be used honestly and sparingly, when there is a genuine quotation at hand, and it is necessary to be very rigorous about the words enclosed by the marks. If something is to be quoted, the exact words must be used. If part of it must be left out because of space limitations, it is good manners to insert three dots to indicate the omission, but it is unethical to do this if it means connecting two thoughts which the original author did not intend to have tied together. Above all, quotation marks should not be used for ideas that you’d like to disown, things in the air so to speak. Nor should they be put in place around clichés; if you want to use a cliché you must take full responsibility for it yourself and not try to fob it off on anon., or on society. The most objectionable misuse of quotation marks, but one which illustrates the danger of misuse in ordinary prose, is seen in advertising, especially in advertisements for small restaurants, for example "just around the corner," or "a good place to eat." No single, identifiable, citable person ever really said, for the record, "just around the corner," much less "a good place to eat," least likely of all for restaurants of the type that use this type of prose.

The dash is a handy device, informal and essentially playful, telling you that you’re about to take off on a different tack but still in some way connected with the present course — only you have to remember that the dash is there, and either put a second dash at the end of the notion to let the reader know that he’s back on course, or else end the sentence, as here, with a period.

The greatest danger in punctuation is for poetry. Here it is necessary to be as economical and parsimonious with commas and periods as with the words themselves, and any marks that seem to carry their own subtle meanings, like dashes and little rows of periods, even semicolons and question marks, should be left out altogether rather than inserted to clog up the thing with ambiguity. A single exclamation point in a poem, no matter what else the poem has to say, is enough to destroy the whole work.

The things I like best in T.S. Eliot’s poetry, especially in the Four Quartets, are the semicolons. You cannot hear them, but they are there, laying out the connections between the images and the ideas. Sometimes you get a glimpse of a semicolon coming, a few lines farther on, and it is like climbing a steep path through woods and seeing a wooden bench just at a bend in the road ahead, a place where you can expect to sit for a moment, catching your breath.

Commas can’t do this sort of thing; they can only tell you how the different parts of a complicated thought are to be fitted together, but you can’t sit, not even to take a breath, just because of a comma,

[mfree]

Hehehe...

My grammar is fine. My true problem is that occasionally, I'll razor an independent clause in two and make a complex sentence of it by putting the end of it in the trunk of my dependent clause-car and driving off.

It's a problem, in that it makes some things I write incredibly hard to follow since the dependent clause it so far split that some readers may not remember where it started, that I need to avoid.

[Ben]

I like that. Especially the colons, which hit the nail on the head for me on the, "ordered to read the next line". Also the exclamation points, which immediately had me thinking about that Seinfeld episode.

[K Frame]

The only colon whose function I'm worried about is mine as I get older...

[Perd Hapley]

My favorite has always been the long row of closing parentheses. 

[Lee]

I like that. Especially the colons, which hit the nail on the head for me on the, "ordered to read the next line".

I do a fair amount of semi-technical writing.  Colons are my friend.  They cover my ass. "You missed that? Not my fault.  Read the part after the colon...it's there."

Now, for something totally different (and Seinfeldian) - Why is it that the abbreviation for the mellow phrase "As soon as possible" (ASAP) sounds so demanding?   

[Bogie]

Since my background is communications, journalism and training, I tend to favor simple sentences. I write somewhat like I speak. While occasionally I will get into some highly convoluted stuff, most of the time I stick with stuff with only one or two parts to the message.
 
I also tend to stay with short paragraphs. Short, at least, to many folks who learned to write in English class, and never had someone explain to them about how information is actually acquired by the reader.
 

[Jamisjockey]

The only colon whose function I'm worried about is mine as I get older...

Why oh why would you be worried about your colon?  A stint in prison you're not telling us about?

[K Frame]

Just wait, beer boy.

I see a future rife with diverticulitis looming for you.

Think you're too young to have to worry about it? I'm sure Mtnbkr probably thought the same way before it reared up and bit him...

[Standing Wolf]

There are three dashes in English language typography.

The hyphen is used to split words at ends of lines or conjoin words: a top-heavy pistol or a late-feeling arrival.

The en dash, so called because it was originally the width of a capitan N, is used to indicate ranges of dates or numbers: three–four days, 11:30–noon. I'd wager not one typographer in twenty has ever so much as heard of the en dash.

The em dash, so called because it was originally the width of a capital M, is used to break or disrupt a statement: the em dash—sometimes used in place of parentheses—is frequently over-used these days.

Ellipses consist of three periods, and are used to indicate something has been left out or incomplete: we went to the gun shop, but...

[Uncle Bubba]

The em dash, so called because it was originally the width of a capital M, is used to break or disrupt a statement: the em dash—sometimes used in place of parentheses—is frequently over-used these days.

Guilty.

[RocketMan]

Ellipses consist of three periods, and are used to indicate something has been left out or incomplete: we went to the gun shop, but...

I'm guilty of beating the heck out of this one.

[Bogie]

Hmmm... I just tried to access some of the extra characters/punctuation, and couldn't... Of course, my knowledge about it is from the Windoze/Mac background, and I'm still lurnin' this Linux bit...
 
'Cuz, by the way, I used to also play typographer...
 

[Standing Wolf]

I just tried to access some of the extra characters/punctuation, and couldn't...

Ooops! Sorry! Forgot. These are the Macintosh key combinations:

— Em dash: shift + option + hyphen
– En dash: option + hyphen
… Ellipses: option + semi-colon

I'm not sure, but believe Windows people still have to key in numbers.

[Hawkmoon]

But with a semicolon there you get a pleasant little feeling of expectancy; there is more to come; to read on; it will get clearer.

People who presume to write articles about correct punctuation should practice it. The sentence above is grammatically incorrect. The third clause ("...; to read on; ...") does not have a subject and an object. Parts of a sentence separated by semicolons have to function as complete sentences, meaning that each part must have a subject and a predicate.

[Perd Hapley]

You didn't get the part that it was satire?  Artistic license, ya know. 

[S. Williamson]

Ooops! Sorry! Forgot. These are the Macintosh key combinations:

— Em dash: shift + option + hyphen
– En dash: option + hyphen
… Ellipses: option + semi-colon

I'm not sure, but believe Windows people still have to key in numbers.

IIRC:
Em dash: Press hyphen twice
En dash: Press hyphen once
Ellipses: Press period thrice

Numbers: Use the 10-key on the far right 

[seeker_two]

Ellipses consist of three periods, and are used to indicate something has been left out or incomplete: we went to the gun shop, but...

I love ellipses...love to use them a lot...sometimes I even add an extra dot, I love them so....and it makes my posts look old-timey....kinda like an old telegraph....ellipses are lots of fun.... 

[CNYCacher]

That first paragraph reminds me of programming in SCHEME.

[Brad Johnson]

I can put up with a bit of misplaced punctuation.  It's the egregious overuse of the random and superfluous "basically" and "essentially" that makes me want to vomit.

That, or thinking about Mike's colon... 

Brad

[Ex-MA Hole]

I'm sure Mtnbkr probably thought the same way before i reared up and bit him...

Oh, REALLY Mike?

Wow....

[Balog]

...

[RocketMan]

I'll see your ..., Balog, and raise you .... .

[seeker_two]

I'm sure Mtnbkr probably thought the same way before i reared up and bit him...

Don't ask...don't tell, Mike....

[Balog]

I'll see your ..., Balog, and raise you .... .

 

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