I’ve been engaged in any number of discussions regarding punctuation and their use. For instance, take the poor bedgraggled and disrespected exclamation point. God love it, but it gets more than its fair share of abuse because writers use it to take the place of their writing.
For instance:
“Beagle! Get me my margarita! Now!”
vs.
I felt my heart skip one beat…then two. Oh dear God, was I experiencing tequila withdrawl? Would doctors take a sample of my blood and find… blood? I knew my body better than anyone, and I knew that my circulatory system ran on tequila. I had to shout out my demands before I lost consciousness. “Beagle, get me my margarita. STAT.“
Ok, so the first sentence actually works, but think about its impact if I used exclamation points almost every other sentence. I once edited a manuscript with over five-hundred of our little pointy friend. What happened is the writer forced the poor exclamation point to do all the heavy lifting of writing. The result was that his writing was quite pedestrian because there was no show. Only tell. Hence, my second example of how you can avoid overusing punctuation while forcing yourself to be a better, clearer writer.
The flip side, of course, is under-use of punctuation. Like the poor comma. I’ve noticed over the years that my dippy/swooshy little friend has been given its walking papers. I’m from the old school, so this aberration doesn’t make me happy because it has created a lot more confusion. Let me re-read this paragraph five more times so I can figure out what the author is trying to say. A dearth of commas is not your friend. And let’s face it, commas are there to make the reading easier and clearer.
I know, the comma has been slimmed down and put on a restrictive diet in order to save money. Newspapers dropped them in order to save on space. Editors who are twelve-years-old also have dropped the comma, possibly due to the fact that the teaching of English has waned over the years. For whatever reason, commas shouldn’t be trifled with. Learn how to use them. And here’s why…
O-M-G!!! Emails and texting are destroying punctuation, spelling and grammar with comments I get similar to, “Im hear if your in need call me!” It may drive me crazy enough to raise my 5th grade English teacher from the dead. Never thought I’d say that………
Yeah. When I write non-fiction, I have one client that is constantly telling me to ‘review comma use’. I eventually worked out that they mean they want basically no commas, even when their use is correct and appropriate. Grrrr. It’s hard to remember what punctuation different editors like.
I just want to thank you for your help and comments. I was able to find an agent for my memoirs on irritable bowel syndrome and it only cost me an editing fee of three hundred twenty-five dollars. There were others who charged a lot more , but I have been saving up. Again, thank you…
I agree with Vanessa as to why exclamation points are having their “fifteen minutes”. They’re everywhere, as if suddenly everyone must yell to be heard over the din of clacking keyboards. I’m putting myself on an exclamation point diet.
Back when I took a journalism course, I learned the exclamation point was called a “screamer.” That gave me pause!