Punctuation matters. Correct punctuation tells the reader how to read the words you have on the page: where to put the pauses, how to make sense of your sentences.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
It\u2019s not too much to say that bad punctuation will kill a book. It\u2019ll get rejected by agents and readers alike. Trying to sell a badly punctuated manuscript is like going on a date wearing last week\u2019s jogging pants.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The underlying problem is the same in both cases. The badly punctuated manuscript and the dirty jogging bottoms both say, \u201cI don\u2019t care.\u201d I don\u2019t care about you, my hot date. I don\u2019t care about you, my precious reader.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Any sane date will just make their excuses and leave. A reader will do the same \u2013 and quite right too.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So here goes with a quick guide to the major punctuation marks. In each case, we\u2019ll talk about:<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Most of you reading this will know the basic rules. Even so, it\u2019s likely that you\u2019ll be committing at least some of the errors some of the time (a few of them are very common indeed.) And pretty much everyone will get at least something from thinking about how to use punctuation marks in a more sophisticated, writerly way.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
OK, you know when to use this little beast. You use it at the end of sentences, so long as those sentences aren\u2019t questions or exclamations (in which case you\u2019d use the \u201c?\u201d or \u201c!\u201d instead.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Easy, right?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
One of the most prevalent errors in manuscripts written by first time writers is the so-called run-on sentence. It looks something like this:<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\nShe was a breath of fresh air in our little town, she came into school on her first day with a bunch of garden flowers for the teacher and home-made candy for us, her schoolmates, it should have looked cheesy, but we fell in love with her on the spot.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n
The error here is simple. The writer is using commas (\u201c,\u201d) where they should be using periods. The result is like someone just gabbling in your face, yadda-yadda-yadda, without giving you a chance to draw a breath or reflect.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The solution is simple. You chop the sentence up with periods, to produce this:<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\nShe was a breath of fresh air in our little town. She came into school on her first day with a bunch of garden flowers for the teacher and home-made candy for us, her schoolmates. It should have looked cheesy, but we fell in love with her on the spot.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n
Phew! That\u2019s a mile better already. Notice that there\u2019s still a comma dividing two of the sentences (\u201cIt should have looked cheesy\u201d and \u201cwe fell in love with her.\u201d)<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The grammar-reason why that comma is OK is that you have \u201cbut\u201d \u2013 a conjunction, a connector word \u2013 joining the two sentences. In a way, though, I\u2019d prefer you to forget about the grammar and just listen to the rhythms. Say the first snippet out loud, then the second one. If it feels right, it is right. That\u2019s pretty much all the grammar you are ever going to need.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
More Advanced Ways To Use The Tool<\/h4>\n\n\n\n
Back at school, you were probably told to avoid sentence fragments \u2013 the name given to sentences that lack a main verb. (Like this one, for example.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n
That\u2019s rather old-fashioned advice in some ways, and it\u2019s certainly unhelpful advice to offer when it comes to writing fiction or creative non-fiction.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Take my own work. My narrator is jerky, tough, awkward, abrupt. Her voice is all those things too, and the consequence is that her prose makes use of a lot of sentence fragments. For instance:<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\nThere\u2019s a woman at the wheel. Forties, maybe. Blonde. Shoulder-length hair held back in a grip. Blue woollen coat worn over a dark jumper.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I kick the door. Hard. I\u2019m wearing boots and kick hard enough to dent the panel.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n
Pretty clearly here, the periods are dividing my language up into units of meaning, not into sentences. The words Blonde<\/em> and Hard<\/em> are just words, after all. They\u2019re not even attempting to be complete sentences.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Equally clearly, my narrator\u2019s language forces that kind of punctuation on the manuscript. If you wanted to follow the \u201cperiod = end of sentence\u201d rule, you\u2019d have to rewrite the text so it looked something like this:<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\nThere\u2019s a woman at the wheel. She is in her forties, maybe. Her blonde, shoulder-length hair is held back in a grip. She wears a blue woollen coat worn over a dark jumper. [and so on]<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n
That\u2019s not just differently punctuated. It has a different tone, a different mood. It\u2019s perfectly fine writing \u2026 but it\u2019s not what I wanted. The \u201ccorrect\u201d punctuation ends up destroying the voice I worked hard to create.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
As a rough, rough guide, literary fiction will tend to have relatively few sentence fragments, while crime thrillers and the like will have many more.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
But fiction is much more supple than that general rule suggests. So yes, my character is tough. Yes, she uses lots of sentences fragments in approved noir style. But she also reflects on philosophy, quotes poetry, introspects extensive, and so on. In the end, you build from the character to the voice to the punctuation. It makes no sense to try building the other way.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The Exclamation Mark (!)<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
An exclamation mark (or point) marks an exclamation, denotes shouting, or otherwise gives emphasis to a sentence. It\u2019s like a shouty form of a period.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
But watch out! You think you know how to use the exclamation mark, but \u2026<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The Most Common Error<\/h4>\n\n\n\n
The most common error is to use the exclamation mark!<\/p>\n\n\n\n
It\u2019s fine in emails. It\u2019s OK-ish in blog posts. But in novels? Avoid it. As Scott Fitzgerald remarked, \u201cAn exclamation mark is like laughing at your own jokes.\u201d It\u2019s like you\u2019re trying to make your punctuation compensate for a failure of your actual writing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
If you want a rough rule of thumb, you can use one or maximum two exclamation marks per 100,000 words of prose. If you have zero, that\u2019s just fine. And never, ever have a double or treble exclamation mark in your text. What\u2019s fine on Twitter, looks just awful on the printed page.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
More Advanced Ways To (Not) Use The Tool<\/h4>\n\n\n\n
So if I (like most pro authors) hate the exclamation mark, what do you do instead? After all, there may be occasions where you feel your work actually needs the emphasis.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
But consider these alternatives:<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\n#1 \u201cGo get it.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
#2 \u201cGo get it!\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
#3 \u201cGo get it,\u201d he ordered her, sharply.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n
Those options are ranked in approximate order of shoutiness. The first option doesn\u2019t feel especially emphatic. The addition of the exclamation mark adds a little force. The third option adds even more, via a highly coloured verb and adverb combo.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
But neither of the last two options is great. And the issue here is simply this: the actual bit of underlying dialogue is fairly colourless<\/em>, and that\u2019s not going to change, no matter how many toppings you put on. In other words, if you started out with option #1 and found yourself thinking, \u201cHmm, this feels a little bland, so let\u2019s get out the heavy-duty punctuation,\u201d that should be a signal that you need to rewrite things.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So a better option than either #1, #2 or #3 above would be:<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\n#4 \u201cGo get it. Get it now. Give it to me. Never take it again.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n
You\u2019re not using anything more than a common old period there, and you\u2019re not resorting to ordering sharply, yelling loudly, yodelling wildly<\/em> or exclaiming defiantly<\/em>. But because your dialogue is now unmistakeably emphatic, it\u2019s fine on its own.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
If the burger tastes great, you don\u2019t need the relish.<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n
The Ellipsis (\u2026)<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
An ellipsis is a bit of a slippery brute.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
What it does is mark the fact that some words are missing. So, in dialogue, for example, people will often trail off, rather than actually complete a sentence.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
That much is easy \u2013 but how do you actually write it? Three dots is pretty much universal, but do you have spaces between them? Do you have a space before and after the ellipsis? And if you have the ellipsis at the start of a sentence, do you have a period (to denote the end of the previous sentence), then a space, then the ellipsis? That option sounds technically correct, but also rather fussy.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The good news for you is that none of this really matters. Different style authorities advise different things, with some variation between British and American usage.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
And in the end, who really cares? Your editor won\u2019t. Your agent won\u2019t. Your reader won\u2019t. It\u2019s just not a big deal. I\u2019d suggest, in general, that you use three dots without<\/em> spacing in between, but with<\/em> a space before and after. Like so:<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\n\u201cOh, Jen, if you really think that, then we should \u2026 I mean, maybe this was never meant to be.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n
The Most Common Error<\/h4>\n\n\n\n
As with exclamation marks, the primary error is to overuse these little beasts. What works fine in an email, quickly looks annoying on the printed page.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
But whereas I\u2019d advise you to hunt the exclamation mark almost to extinction, you can let the ellipsis breathe, just a little. One ellipsis per chapter is probably too many, but you\u2019d have to be quite a fussy ready to object to half a dozen, or even a dozen, over the course of a full length novel.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
More Advanced Ways To Use The Tool<\/h4>\n\n\n\n
As with the exclamation mark, the best way to use the ellipsis is to let it nudge you into querying your own writing. If you feel yourself wanting to use the ellipsis, just check that it\u2019s not your writing that needs to change. In nine out of ten cases, adjusting your text will be a better option than using the ellipsis.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The Semi-Colon ( ; )<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
The semi-colon is a divider, the way commas and periods are dividers. The comma is the lightest of these in weight: it inserts the shortest of pauses. The period inserts the maximum pause. The semi-colon lives somewhere in between. Here\u2019s an example of all three in action:<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\nIt never normally rained, but the weather that day was awful.
(comma = minimal pause)<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\nIt never normally rained; my mother didn\u2019t even own an umbrella
(semi-colon = mid-weight pause)<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\nIt never normally rained. That day, though, there was a deluge.
(period = strongest pause)<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\nAnd look: you can live without the semi-colon completely. Personally, I quite like semi-colons, but my narrator, Fiona Griffiths, never uses them, so in about 750,000 words of published Fiona Griffiths\u2019 novels, there\u2019s only one semi-colon \u2013 and that enters the text via a direct quote from Wikipedia.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Short message: if the semi-colon scares you, it\u2019s fine to leave it well alone.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The Most Common Error<\/strong><\/h4>\n\n\n\n
There are no common errors with semi-colons, except maybe overuse by people thinking they\u2019re fancy.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
More Advanced Ways To Use The Tool<\/h4>\n\n\n\n
Thinking of semi-colons as a middle-weight pause is technically correct, but it misses something, nevertheless. A better way to conceive of the mark is this: You need a semi-colon when you have two sentences, and the second one corrects or modifies the meaning of the first<\/em>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So take those examples above. We used a semi-colon in this context:<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\nIt never normally rained; my mother didn\u2019t even own an umbrella.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n
The first sentence is, in effect, adjusted by the second. The semi-colon tells us to read the second sentence as a kind of comment on the first one: \u201clook, here\u2019s just how much it never rained.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Or, if you want a slightly more grown-up example, here\u2019s William Faulkner in The Sound and the Fury<\/em>:<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\nClocks slay time\u2026 time is dead as long as it is being clicked off by little wheels; only when the clock stops does time come to life.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n
But you can get too hung up on these things. Arguably, sentences that speak about each other shouldn\u2019t need any punctuation to get their point across. The text itself should handle the communication just fine. So there\u2019ll be plenty of writers (including my narrator) who\u2019d agree with Kurt Vonnegut\u2019s lesson in creative writing:<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\nFirst rule: Do not use semicolons. They are transvestite hermaphrodites representing absolutely nothing. All they do is show you\u2019ve been to college.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n
And who cares if you\u2019ve been to college, right?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Parenthesis<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
Brackets () | Dashes \u2013 \u2013 | Commas ,,<\/p>\n\n\n\n
There are three types of parenthesis you can use. They are:<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\n
- Commas<\/em><\/strong>: The comma, always a useful creature, can be used to separate one clause from the rest.<\/li>\n\n\n\n
- Dashes<\/em><\/strong>: The dash \u2013 a more forceful beast \u2013 can be used in much the same way.<\/li>\n\n\n\n
- Brackets<\/em><\/strong>: The bracket (perfectly fine in non-fiction) is relatively rare in fiction.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n\n\n\n
But these three are not equivalent, and not equally common.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I just opened up my Word document that contains the entire Fiona Griffiths series, and checked to see how many of each punctuation mark I used. In about 650,000 words of text, I used:<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\n
- 39,000 commas, <\/strong>of which, admittedly, many thousand wouldn\u2019t be parenthetical.<\/li>\n\n\n\n
- 5,000 dashes, <\/strong>though most of these were actually hyphens, as in \u201cshort-tempered\u201d. So I\u2019m going to guess maybe only 1,000 actual dashes.<\/li>\n\n\n\n
- 100 brackets<\/strong>, of which many were things like \u201cin Paragraph 22(c)\u201d, where the use of the bracket isn\u2019t really a parenthesis in the normal way.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n\n\n\n
The Most Common Error<\/h4>\n\n\n\n
There are two common errors when it comes to parenthesis. The first error is not to use anything to mark off a clause from the rest of a sentence resulting in (often, but not always) a sentence that is just plain hard to read. For example:<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\nThe comma always a useful creature can be used to separate one clause from the rest.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n
Tucking commas in around the useful-creature clause makes the meaning pop right out.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The second error is kind of the opposite. It\u2019s as though writers get worried that commas aren\u2019t emphatic enough, so they start clamping their text inside brackets, like this:<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\nShe couldn\u2019t get enough of him (understandable, given her past), so she tried to find reasons why he couldn\u2019t leave.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n
And that feels heavy-handed. A simple rewrite releases the sentence and lets it breathe:<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\nUnderstandably, given her tangled past, she couldn\u2019t get enough of him and she tried to find reasons why he couldn\u2019t leave.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n
There\u2019s more flow there. Less sense of an author forcing information at you. The no-brackets alternative seems much more natural to fiction. The with-brackets version is better suited to the information-delivery task of non-fiction.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
More Advanced Ways To Use Parenthesis<\/h4>\n\n\n\n
The real trick with parenthesis \u2013 and with commas particularly \u2013 is to learn to feel the weight of a sentence.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
In most cases, commas will cover your parenthetical needs. If you need to rewrite something to make it work, then rewrite it. If you need the greater weight of dashes, then go for it, but recognise that you are, in a small way, pulling on the handbrake mid-sentence. If that\u2019s what you want, fine. In many cases, there\u2019ll be better options.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Oh, and though I personally never read my text out loud, lots of authors swear by it \u2013 and any hiccups or awkwardness as you read is a huge clue that your punctuation or your text (or both) are at fault.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Hyphens And Dashes<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
The hyphen, the en dash, and the em dash<\/p>\n\n\n\n
We can\u2019t quite leave a post about punctuation without talking about the various dashes available to you. Specifics in one second, but first, a public annoucement:<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The specifics don\u2019t really matter.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n
Yes, a lot of writers (especially those college-educated brutes that got Vonnegut all riled up) care a lot about their en dashes and their em dashes. But if you\u2019ve never spent a moment caring about them in the past, you don\u2019t have to worry that you\u2019ve been doing something very wrong. You haven\u2019t. Any \u201cerrors\u201d on this scale will bother almost nobody \u2013 neither readers, nor agents.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So, here\u2019s what hyphens and dashes are and how to use them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The Hyphen<\/h4>\n\n\n\n
The hyphen is on your keyboard as a minus sign.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
You use it to connect words, as for example:<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\nThe hot-headed wood-cutter tip-toed past the one-eyed she-wolf.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n
Apart from a slight anxiety about whether a hyphen is needed in a particular context (is it woodcutter<\/em> or wood-cutter<\/em>?), it\u2019s hard to get these little fellows wrong. Oh, and although everyone will have a house-style defining when to use hyphens, everyone\u2019s style guide will be a bit different, so there\u2019s often not a clear right and wrong here anyway.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The En Dash<\/h4>\n\n\n\n
The en dash is so called because it is a dash approximately the same width as the letter N. And it doesn\u2019t live on your keyboard anywhere: you have to give it life and breath all by yourself. You do this by hitting Ctrl and the minus sign at the same time, to give yourself something that looks like this:<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\nLudwig van Beethoven (1770\u20131827)<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n
As that example suggests, it\u2019s used mostly for dates, or for things that feel much the same, for example: Washington\u2013New York (in the context of a flight timetable, for example.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The Em Dash<\/h4>\n\n\n\n
The em dash is so called because \u2026 well, you\u2019re going to have to guess which letter-width it\u2019s named after.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
You create this little critter in Word by hitting Ctrl-Alt-minus.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
And the em dash performs the following functions:<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\n
- It marks an interruption in dialogue.<\/strong>
\u201cThe buried treasure,\u201d he said, as he lay dying, \u201cthe treasure can be found just to the right of the old\u2014\u201d<\/li>\n\n\n\n- It marks a parenthesis in the middle of a sentence.<\/strong>
The em dash\u2014more forceful than commas\u2014marks out a parenthesis in the middle of a sentence.<\/li>\n\n\n\n- But it can also mark out a parenthesis at the end of a sentence.<\/strong>
He was allergic to fruit, sunshine, exercise and soap\u2014or so he always insisted.
(The \u201cso he always insisted\u201d part is the parenthesis here. If you were using brackets, that whole end chunk would be enclosed in brackets.)<\/li>\n\n\n\n- It can be used as a slightly informal colon.<\/strong>
The result of that informal colon\u2014often a little hint of comedy, or something of a \u201cta-daa\u201d quality.<\/li>\n\n\n\n- It marks deleted or redacted words.<\/strong>
The accuser, Ms \u2014 \u2014, struck a defiant tone in court.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n\n\n\nBest practice is generally to use the em dash without a space before or after, but that\u2019s one of those things that doesn\u2019t actually matter. Newspapers tend to use spaces and British usage is much more tolerant of spacing and lots of people just don\u2019t know the rules anyway.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
That\u2019s it from me. Beautiful punctuation is often a sign of careful writing and a beautifully readable book.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
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