Brilliant! Great way to show how the entire meaning can change with just a few shifts of a few periods and a tweak or two. Punctuation certainly does matter. I could only imagine if the second one had been written by mistake because Gloria wasn't thinking clearly...
HAH! That is priceless and so beautifully illustrates the problem with unskilled (in this case, delightfully so) use of punctuation.
As a writer, I tend to be quite emancipated from punctuation rules. I don't break the rules for the sake of it, and really hate when people do that. But it is sometimes necessary to circumvert them for good reasons. The thing is, most of the time, in dialogues for example, if you want to suggest a natural speech, you have to "play" with punctuations. Especially comas. I remember a publisher of me, who I think had quite pedantic views on the matter. He insisted to make me put all the comas where they were supposed to be, and the result was quite dull. I had to struggle against him, and finally won when I mentioned Louis Ferdinand Celine and Jack Kerouac. That was quite a pretentious parallel but hey... I won
Commas (note the second "m") can be used quite creatively in fiction. It's all about effect and what the writer wants to accomplish. However, I would say it's important to learn the rules about comma usage before creatively breaking them.
Yes, sure. Yet, I do think that most writers acquire the basic rules while reading books. And you realize pretty soon that, when you really think about the meaning of what you're writing, you don't make many mistakes (the example given by We Are Cartographers speaks for itself ^^). I'm not sure that's something you should over-intellectualize at the beginning, but that's quite personal. Maybe it depends on the writer.
I use semi-colons occasionally when I'm describing something as I tend to be somewhat descriptive in my books, perhaps too much so. Then again some people tend to use the commas instead of a semi-colon similar to this: The man was carrying a lot of gear, he shouldered his backpack containing cans of food, tools and other items. Instead of: The man was carrying a lot of gear; he shouldered his backpack containing cans of food, tools and other items.
It's one of the cornerstones of writing well. Trust me you don't want your audience to scratch their head when you mean "we're" and not "were"
Perhaps a bit OT but this whole thread and the ever reincarnated question of where do the commas go? And what to do with the semi-colon. And why can't I put a comma there? reminds me of a story told by Mort Walker, the originator and cartoonist for the old... ooooold Beetle Bailey comic strip. Back in his day, belly buttons were considered X-rated and he once showed poor old Private Bailey's belly button. The censor was thus required to scrape the naval off of the cel before the cartoon could go to print and Walker was promptly advised that navels, under any circumstances, were not appropriate for public viewing. In his ever so comical anti-establishment protest, he promptly put Beetle on KP duty cutting up oranges - NAVEL oranges to be exact. And, just so the censors would get the message, he put TWO navels on each orange! Sure enough, that poor censor spent hours scraping two navels from each orange in every segment of that comic strip -- and it was a Sunday edition so there were plenty of "belly buttons" to be treated! So, back to the issue at hand. As is often said by those much smarter than I, you must first know the rules before you can break them. And to that, I would add, "You must know what rules you are breaking and why to do it intelligently and well." Anybody can break the rules but, as is often echoed in the halls of justice, "Ignorance of the law is no excuse". In writing, if you don't realize you are breaking the rule, you aren't really breaking the rule. It's just ignorance that prevents you from writing correctly. If you want to break a 'rule' of writing, you should first know the 'rule' and you should understand why you are 'breaking' it. What are you accomplishing by your straying from the 'straight and narrow'?
Well said. Now, what are we accomplishing? Effect! Take Flowers For Algernon for example. I love the way the author uses punctuation to demonstrate how Charly is learning whe,n! h.e types; his, words, out: in a "manner su'ch as this!!?? It shows that awe of discovering a new thing and wanting to use it over and over very well in my opinion. Another example is my MS when the MC writes her suicide note. Given that she is dunk and in a state of extreme emotional turmoil, I used purposeful spelling and punctuation mistakes to help show that high-strung state of mind.
That is the character's issue... which is a whole other kettle of fish entirely! The author cannot help if s/he has an illiterate or drunkenly/depressed malfunctioning character. (Well, yes, we can but - if we made them all perfect, we'd have no story!)
Then, again, too many people nowadays, would be authors included unfortunately, haven't got a clue as to how to put the semi-colon to good use. They don't understand its purpose and so cannot use it correctly. Instead, they generally just forego the use of the lowly semi-colon in favor of the more comfortably familiar comma.
It could be argued, with equal validity, that too many people THINK they know how to use a semicolon, and throw them into their writing with careless abandon. There are many very knowledgeable writers who simply find little need to use semicolons in fiction. Whether or not you choose to use them, and how frequently, make sure YOU understand their proper use, and try not to make ignorant assumptions about writers who choose differently. One think is certain. If you don't know the proper use of semicolons, it will be far more obvious if you use them anyway than if you don't use them at all!
