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Birdie

Writing With Style

Editors graze through piles of submissions with eyes trained to watch for stories that capture their attention and hold on to it. How? With a natural flowing rhythm that delivers a beginning that hooks, a middle that lures the imagination along with a hunger to know more, and an end that satisfies. Unsuspecting authors don’t realize that common mistakes in punctuation break up this forward momentum. Readers assimilate intended mood, tone and pace on a subconscious level. Punctuation works as a tool to deliver words with the passion with which they are penned.

Errors in punctuation cause confusion and may even make sentences mean something other than what the author had in mind. Overuse of exclamation marks, dashes and other punctuation reserved to make a point not only lose their effectiveness when overused but make layout for the editor challenging and time consuming.

As a new writer, punctuation intimidated me a bit. “Should I put a comma there? Or maybe it should be a semi-colon?” How do we know? Basic rules of style do exist. Books like, The Chicago Manual of Style or The Elements of Style by Strunk provide much of the help you need. However, there’s another source. Peer feedback.

I can’t emphasize enough the importance of sharing your work with other writers. Whether online or face-to-face, writer’s groups provide a valuable asset. People not only get to know each other, but become familiar with the voice and style of each individual’s writing. Reading about things like punctuation can be dry and uninteresting, but when someone makes a correction on my manuscript it becomes personal. I learn from it. It takes time, but eventually I do learn from it. Within the rich soil of a study group, my writing germinated, took root and blossomed along with my knowledge of style.

Making a Cheat Sheet
Over time, I collected useful bits of style information pertaining to my weak areas. Like I said, it takes a while for things to sink in. For instance, I may get to a point in a story where I question if I should use a dash, ellipsis or nothing at all. My notes remind me of rules that apply. I keep these memory boosters in one document and call the collection my “Cheat Sheet.”

Here are a few examples. Use these reminders as a starter to build your own style cheat sheet. Don’t burden yourself with collecting information you already know. Keep the pointers you need to help overcome common punctuation mistakes.

Dashes and Ellipses
Punctuation should be used to make pacing clear, not to cloud it. Use a dash rather than ellipses to show an interruption. An interruption cuts off the flow of information. It leads readers to wonder what else would have been said. They won’t know unless the writer reveals more details later in the story.

In fiction, ellipses show a gap in dialog such as one side of a phone conversation. This lull lets the reader know more information exists. Information continues to flow, but the reader only has access to part of it. It’s not an interruption, yet still leaves readers hungry to know more. What’s being said on the other end?

When writing non-fiction, placing an ellipsis in the middle of a quotation indicates the omission of material.

An ellipsis is composed of three periods with spaces or brackets before and after the ellipsis. If the ellipsis indicates the omission of material at the end of a sentence, use four points. Three of these compose the ellipsis and the fourth is the period. The ellipsis should follow a blank space. Do not place a space before the period if the ellipsis ends the sentence. Points in an ellipsis stay together; don’t allow a point to drift to the next line of text.

Quotation Marks
The use of punctuation within quotation marks tends to be but does not need to be confusing. Differences between British and American practice may be the source of most errors among American writers. In America, periods and commas go inside quotation marks. Colons and semicolons go outside the closing quotation marks.

If a quotation is interrupted and continues in the same sentence, don’t capitalize the second part of the quote.

Use single quotation marks to indicate a quote inside of a quote.

Commas
Commas capture the rhythm of speech. As a child, I learned to use a comma to indicate a pause but failed to remember other rules dictating correct usage. When I started writing, one thing often corrected was my overuse of commas. Once this flaw in my writing became evident, I guessed and tended not to use commas when they were needed. It really doesn’t have to be that complicated. Following are basic rules for comma usage:

• When placing a noun or noun phrase with another noun or noun phrase as an explanatory equivalent, and both hold the same relation to the other words in the sentence.
  
  Example: Mary Brown, my neighbor, lost twenty pounds on a juice fast.
  
  
  • “My neighbor,” is the explanatory equivalent to Mary Brown.
    

• Commas to separate a list of items:
  
  Example: She bought a hat, shoes, gloves and a matching purse.
  

• Participial phrases commonly modify nouns and pronouns. Readers associate this phrase with the noun or pronoun adjacent to it. Use a comma before or after participle phrasing:
  
  Example: Thinner than she’d been in years, Mary walked into the reunion hall wearing her new dress.
  
  
• To introduce dialog or quotes:
  
  Example: The man at the door asked, “Do I know you?”
  
  
• Separate an expression or exclamation:
  
  Example: Oh my, I believe she’s going to faint.
  
  
• Enclose parenthetical phrases and expressions with commas. A parenthetical phrase offers additional information that can be omitted from the sentence without changing the meaning.
  
  Example: Mary, although nervous, hadn’t felt this good in years.

• Whitefield studied elephants for years (124).
• One writer says elephants "possess an instinctive exploratory behavior" (Whitefield 124).
• Whitefield says elephants "possess an instinctive exploratory behavior" (124).
• Whitefield says, "Elephants are intelligent [. . .]" (187).
• One opinion is that "Elephants are intelligent [. . .]" (Whitefield 187).

• Donna Sundblad says, "Writers conferences are a great place to network with other writers."
• Sundblad stated: "Important contacts are made when attending writer’s conferences."

• William Harrington says that the object "is a tree."
• Janet Summers notes that he "can recognize a tree."


(Note that there is no correct mixture of the two styles—do not use "that" followed by a comma and capital letter of the first word, for example.)


• WRONG: Ted Freen says that, "You should not imitate this example."
• RIGHT: Brown says that "invention is the mother of necessity" (326).

• Richard says, "This 'humdinger' drives like a dream."

• Green for opening quotes and red for closing quotes. If you have an opening quote, be sure you close the quote. Don’t “leave the gate open.” It’s a source of confusion.
  


• Circle commas. Check comma use to the rules above.
  


• Blue for dashes and orange for ellipses. Ask yourself if it is an interruption or lull.
  


• Yellow for exclamation marks and italicized words. (Yellow for caution. You don’t want to overuse or they lose impact).
  


• Draw a square around semicolons. Does it pass the test? Can it be replaced by a conjunction?