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Poetics

Christine

CHECK IT OUT!

One of the great things about writing a column is that once in a while you get to get on your soapbox about something. I found a great site on the web for posting themes, articles, poems, short stories, and essays. While browsing through it I stopped to check out an article on a subject I was interested in. It was horrible. While I have no doubt that the information given was correct and that the author was knowledgeable about his subject, the spelling, grammar, and punctuation were so bad that it was impossible to read. What a shame. The fellow might have had a future.

Electronic Assistance - Spelling, Usage: Tense: Punctuation

Most word processing programs have some form of spelling checker. USE IT!!! There is a cute little poem that goes around the e-mail circuit about spell-checking programs, and I am sorry I don't know who originated it. The last couple of lines go something like - "I no its letter perfect, my checker tolled me sew." Like so many things, what makes this funny is that it is true, so true. Spell checker will tell you if you spelled it correctly, but will not tell you if you used the correct word or form of the word. Even so, it will still catch a lot of errors, such as typos and actual misspellings, so start with using your checker.

Your computer may also have a grammar check and a thesaurus. The thesaurus is a great help. Instead of getting out the big dictionary I simply check out alternative words. This lets me know right away if I have used a word that means what I want it to. The grammar check on mine does not always do the job. It often takes things out of context and questions them when they are perfectly fine the way they are. It is good for making you check to see if you have used words the way you intended and catches usage problems like 'its' and 'it's', 'there' and 'their', and 'effect' vs. 'affect'.

After you have used the electronic help, read your piece line by line. I have read things lately that make me wonder, quite frankly, if the author ever read his own piece. A good way to do this is to read every other line first, then go back to the lines you skipped and go over them. Another way, told to me by someone who edits books, is to literally read it backwards - last line to first line. The reason for these two suggestions is that so many of us (me included) know what we intended to say, so our minds skip over the mistakes we made as we read. I once sent off a short story only to have a friend discover that a critical word was left out of the climactic paragraph! Concentrating on the lines out of context makes the errors easier to spot.

Check for errors in tense. Confession time: this is my greatest problem! I have a tendency to bounce from past to past perfect, future, present, anywhere it might take me. It is a hard thing to watch for because in the normal world we actually speak that way, bouncing back and forth. In writing it can confuse the reader.

The last thing I want to mention is punctuation. I am the world's worst about putting too many commas in something. I'll bet I take out at least two-thirds of the commas that I originally placed. Read the piece out loud, pausing at every comma. Remember when your English teacher reminded you that a comma takes the place of the word 'and'? If you use the word 'and' and the connecting thought is the only other thought you have, a comma is not necessary. Watch for missing periods, run-on sentences, places where a period should be replaced by a question mark -- and cut out the commas!

What has all this to do with poetry? Remember, a poem is a story, essay, or description told in as few words as possible. Every word counts. So does every period, comma and question mark. When you use the wrong word or spell it wrong it will change or spoil the effect you are trying to get. And while I know there is a tendency to not use any punctuation in poetry at all, I personally believe this is a big mistake. Punctuation is the rhythm of your poem. It tells the reader when to pause and reflect, when to breathe, when to think. Sometimes if you don't place a comma or a period where it needs to be, the piece takes on a completely different meaning. If you don't punctuate you have the world's longest run-on sentence. Too many commas can have a bad effect, too. If you place a comma at the end of each line of your poetry, your sentences can get choppy and singsong. Poetry should be read just like you would prose -- stop at the end of the sentence, not the line, and pause at the end of the thought. Punctuate your poems the way you want them read, not just because it is the end of the line.

Example:
Attics are great! For lying in state
is the true, unglossed history of man.
Where children can play on a dark, rainy day
and discover the treasures at hand.
They will find books and clothes and things to disclose
tales of fortunes once lost and then found.
Legends of knights; tales of ancestor's plights;
The stories will keep them spellbound!

The bottom line is, EDIT your work. It is not hard to tell the difference between a piece that has been edited and one that was just written and submitted. Editors know.

P.S. I deleted 50 commas from this article.