Take a Punctuation Mark Out to Lunch
By Tom Bentley | May 2, 2013 |
Today’s guest is business writer and editor Tom Bentley. Tom is a published journalist and essayist (300+ articles), and the author of a short story collection, Flowering and Other Stories, published last spring by AuthorMike Ink. His 1999 short story, All That Glitters, won the National Steinbeck Center’s short story contest, and he has won many other nonfiction and fiction awards and contests. Check out his recent “Why I Write” post on the popular Men With Pens blog. We were thrilled that Tom agreed to guest post with WU to talk about one of the writer’s most important (and most misunderstood) tools: punctuation. When we asked him why he wanted to write a post about punctuation, he said:
Because good punctuation has always made me emotional. And because BAD punctuation has always made me emotional. Also, I’ve heard that there’s a campaign to get rid of the apostrophe. These Bolsheviks must be hunted down!
Follow Tom on his twitter @bentguy1 or his blog. Take it away, Tom!
Take a Punctuation Mark Out to Lunch
A comma, a period and a semicolon walk into a bar … oh, wait! I can’t finish the joke; I forget how it’s punctuated. Wow, tough crowd. But punctuation’s no joke, my friends—each punctuation mark has a grave (or acute) purpose: sometimes bearing a serious slant, sometimes swinging a strong, straight shoulder to torque the weight of words through thought rivers. Think of the cymbal crash of the exclamation point, the yearning intrigue of the question mark, the potential hidden menace of the semicolon.
But behind the sober, workaday faces of those little bits of pause and check, it’s not so black and white. Every punctuation mark has its own personality, much more idiosyncratic than that of a bland worker wielding the traffic signals of sentence flow. Like any of us, they appreciate the anonymity of a job well done, but at the same time, they don’t mind letting on that there’s a purple sash under the white cotton shirt.
Consider the comma. If the period is a full stop, the comma is an intake of breath, the holding of the conductor’s baton before the wrist is flicked and the words swirl. The comma is the odalisque of marks; concepts nestle within its coy curves. And as with curves, one pauses at entry and accelerates away. The comma, a curved finger that both beckons and halts.
Whereas the semicolon, top hat and all, is truly the formal gentleman of punctuation. But look closely; the semicolon also has a rakish element, the Frenchman with a beret, who with no small show of bonhomie will ask you to stop for a moment, have a smoke, a bite of croissant, invite you to consider the revolution. Then and only then can you march on. The semicolon, mannered, foppish, sincere.
The colon is much more the fussy passport clerk: stop, stop, papers please, now! You can see the words piling up, bumping behind the knees of the words ahead, but there’s no getting around the colon; words must heel. The colon, officious, waxed, but willing to negotiate—as long as standards are obeyed.
But the colon never yells. No such constraints hold the exclamation point, the train crossing of marks, all flashing lights and clanging bells. We dread the shout of “exclamation point!” in a crowded theater. More dreadful yet, its dull employ as the marketer’s cudgel. Usage is a matter of taste, and the exclamation point is the habanero.
photo by t3rmin4t0r
There’s something visibly friendly about the apostrophe, particularly when it’s engaged to signal the omitted letter. The ensuing contraction doesn’t bespeak a sense of loss, but rather is casual and merry, there’s a genial wave. Heaps o’ fun. Down the ‘atch. All’s right with the world. The apostrophe is utterly offhand, but trustworthy.
Then there’s the swallowtail coat of the full stop, the period. The world threatens to end with not a whimper, but a period. It’s a sententious mark, full of itself, a round of circular reasoning. It’s remarkable that something so even, so un-elliptical (unless you add a couple of kissing cousins) has such an ego, but there it is. Period.
The parenthesis is sturdy, but a bit dull. (All punctuation marks are punctual, except for the closing parenthesis, which because of the curve of its leg, always arrives at the end of the sentence.) We’ll skip past its breathy embrace.
And since the post is going on a bit, I can only nod to that happy hand-me-the-baton coupler, the hyphen, and give but a bow to that dashing fellow—the dash. But I do want to close with a bang: an interrobang, that is.
An alloy of the question mark and the exclamation point (dubbed on Wikipedia as a “quesclamation” mark), the bang implies the asking of a question in a heightened state. Perhaps it’s apt for an epitaph in a suburban cemetery, something like “Christ, all this and they give me a view of the Safeway‽” But that mixed message of outrage and puzzlement seems terribly two-faced.
In closing, don’t forget that National Punctuation Day is coming in the fall. Be sure to take a semicolon out to lunch.
Tom Bentley is a novelist, essayist, and business and travel writer. (He does not play banjo.) He’s published hundreds of freelance pieces in newspapers, magazines, and online. He is the author of three novels, a collection of short stories, a how-to book on finding and cultivating your writing voice and a memoir of his sordid teenage criminality. His singing is known to frighten the horses. See his lurid website confessions at tombentley.com.
Delightful, Tom. …’the traffic signals of word flow’. I hold that concept and image. Most excellent.
Alex, I’m pleased you’re pleased. Punctuation is one of those subtle language spicings that can make the difference in how a sentence is absorbed. Kind of like a dash of chipotle in a dish that’s regaled by the senses, but bypassed by the brain.
Very clever, Tom. I really enjoyed this. I didn’t know there was National Punctuation Day. What about quotation marks? Curly or straight?
Well, you know Paula, that Microsoft Word designates the curly quotation marks as “Smart quotes” and thus instills some kind of prejudice against the straight and narrow (who perhaps had poor schooling).
But if we call them “dumb” surely a committee will be formed to fight the slander and someone will lose their job.
Never, in a million years, would I expect to be drinking coffee and smiling as I read a post on punctuation! Wonderful to read a business writer loving punctuation with the passion of a poet!
Hey Cris, much obliged! I’m no poet (I always loved that term “poetaster” in reference to the inferior poet, but which always looked to me like someone who licked a poet now and then). Glad you liked the piece.
I always read my writing out loud. The punctuation errors glare at me.
Mary Jo, yes—I recently read aloud the draft of a new novel of mine, one I’d edited both on screen and paper a few times. Arrggghh! I made SO many changes based on sentence rhythm: what sang on the page by eye screeched on the page by mouth.
Fabulous! How on earth did you manage (I mean, seriously—) to get all of them into this post? Wait … what about an elipsis? Is it not a punctuation mark; the individual “dot-dot-dot” not eliptical individually but forming an elipse if connected end dot to end dot, top and bottom? Wait, there’s more: quotation marks, double and single.
It’d be a shame if these marks were neglected during National Punctuation Day.
Rosemary, I did a bit of sleight-of-word with the ellipses, elliptically referring to them as formed by the kissing cousins of the period, but not naming the critters outright. But oh so true about the quotation mark family, unmentioned here, but cherished in memory. (I use quotation marks to hang pictures in my house.)
Because I was blathering a bit at the end, I couldn’t put all these fine actors in the play. But I’m sure you’ll see them all prancing on National Punctuation Day!
Oh yes, Rosemary, the ellipsis … ellipses. This is a peeve of mine. I see it without spaces like this…this. And as in editor, I’m always inserting the spaces on either side. Tom, what’s your opinion on ellipses and spacing? I think Chicago Manual of Style says that one space on either side is correct. Your thoughts?
Paula, I was an elipses offender. The punctuation maven in one of my writers’ groups “red-penned” every elipsis in the work I offered that week. “There’s only three dots and there is a space before and a space after. Any you use too many of them.”
Paula, I’m with Chicago (I can’t say otherwise because it’s that city of big shoulders, and a skinny guy like me doesn’t have a chance). Yes, spaces on either side of an ellipsis, to give the pause—or the elision—even more breathing room.
And Rosemary, I’m afraid I agree with your writing group; a superfluity of ellipses can make a piece just too dotty.
I’ve always thought the ellipse was good for showing a piece of dialog that trailed off rather than got interrupted. Interrupted seems the bailiwick of the double-hyphen, no?
Scott, I think the dash is just the bold fellow to thrust the sword of “wait!” into an interruptive moment. But yes, for trailing off, the ellipsis, which, well, um, I did have a point …
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How is it possible to take a dry subject and make it delightfully interesting?
Well…you did it.
Henya, thanks for your warm words. (But of course we know that punctuation is anything but dry—why, some marks visibly sweat with the effort to hold a sentence together.)
Charming. Elegant. Punctuation is to an author’s personality as accessories are to a woman’s outfit. It’s the flair in the fashion, the sparkle at the tips of the fireworks bloom.
It is with the mildest of dismay, then, that I report being stopped by only one of the dazzling metaphors in this otherwise perfect essay. A purple sash hidden beneath a white cotton shirt?
I’m a white cotton dress shirt kind of guy. It’s the proud workaday uniform of the office, recording the efforts of the day in it’s 5pm creases. I like to think my work is creative and my commitment passionate, but I can assure you, friends, that my slim-cut, narrow collar, subtly-striped Theory dress shirt does not conceal a sash of any kind, let alone a purple one. There’s not even an undershirt beneath it.
Perhaps I am all commas and periods, the plain vanilla milkshake of punctuators. So be it. Keep your “quesclamation” mark. As with Quaker chairs, there is reverence in simplicity.
Donald, I admire the starch of your comment (and of your shirt). I suppose in many instances, we don’t want our punctuation marks to be too full of themselves, taking a RuPaul approach to sentence management. But even a worker bee wants to buzz aloud now and then.
I love the comment about Quaker chairs and quesclamation marks—good one!
Thanks for a most delightful post, Tom. I hope we’ll get more from you here on WU.
Donald, again, thank you. I hope I can come up with another Unboxable that’s worthy.
I have never been so taken with punctuation as I am now – you’ve made it into poetry. I will no doubt pay closer attention as I employ them in my prose. I can tell you that I am partial to the comma and the ellipsis, but perhaps I will pay a little more attention to the others from now on.
Jillian, indeed, take a stand—give the pedestrian comma its due! Maybe you serve it a bit more dessert at the table, but make sure all the marks get fed now and then.
By the way, I had to go check out your “Indefatigable” post, because that’s a word I love to say; it reminds me of those kids’ playgrounds that have a series of stepping posts with varying heights that induce you to jump from one to another (and you can plunk your weight down the hardest on the one you choose, like the word’s accent).
In-de-fat-i-ga-ble. Yeah!
Way to make me smile this morning. :)
Denise Willson
Author of A Keeper’s Truth
Denise, my pleasure—stay smiling!
I’ve taken Comma out to lunch before, but never again. She just droned on and on and on about this, that, and the other, never once letting me get a word, or even two, in edgewise, a mode of behavior, manners, and conversation which I find, even with my background in public speaking, radio, and commercials, to be boring, repetitious, and always seems to run on forever.
Scott, Comma does get caught up in the whirlwind of clause and effect, doesn’t she? You might have to catch her in a snare of brackets next time. Loved your comment.
To paraphrase a wise, finger-wielding alien character, “Ar-ar-ar”.
Which bring me to another point. Quotation marks and sentence endings.
I may be wrong, but it seems we were always taught to put the period inside a quotation if said quote ended a sentence. Recently, I’ve seen a lot of people putting it outside.
What say you?
But Scott, who are these varlets putting them outside? You can’t shunt that closed-quote period out the door like a smelly dog. Inside we stand.
Even in the face of a torrent of single-spacers after the period? I always assumed the poor guy need his space-space.
I adore this post and topic. One of my favorite craft books can be seen in the left bottom sidebar here at WU–A Dash of Style: The Art and Mastery of Punctuation by Noah Lukeman. I think it’s my most highlighted and dog-eared craft book. Who knew reading about semi-colons could be so captivating‽
Thanks for being with us, Tom, and for this delightful post.
Therese, my thanks back at you and Kathleen for giving me a chance to frolic here. One of the great aspects of WU is that there’s such a breadth of topics entertained by the posts, from craft to criticism, fiction to non, industry to history. And your house writers are so durn smart it smarts. Really though, thank you.
And I didn’t know that Mr. Lukeman had written a punctuation book; I’m familiar with some of the good stuff he’s offered the writing community as an agent on his site. I’ll to check it out, and maybe add it to Eats, Shoots and Leaves, Woe Is I and some of the other stalwarts on my shelf.
That was intended to be “I’ll have to check it out” but my mind had checked out for a moment. Proofreader’s sneeze.
I interviewed Noah here in 2009, if you’re interested in a read.
You are clearly not alone. Jane Kaufman also gets emotional about punctuation marks.
Erica, yowsah—that is a dandy piece on punctuation from Ms Kaufman; she’s a metaphor maven of a high order. I hadn’t seen her stuff before, but I’ll look for it.
I so enjoyed this post! Everyone who writes needs an understanding of punctuation, but who knew it could be such fun? Thank you for a great start to my day.
Vicki, assuredly, punctuation marks are fun—but don’t ever turn your back on a bracket. Damn things have a nasty temper, particularly before morning coffee.
Who *doesn’t* love a good interrobang?
Though I’ve always had a weakness for the comma, almost as if I am getting a commission on the blessed things.
Apostrophes and quotation marks are sneaky critters, though; sometimes they are playing hooky from a place they should be, and other times, inserting themselves where they have no business. There’s even a blog of “Unnecessary” Quotation Marks that post pictures of them photobombing otherwise perfectly nice signs and business communications.
Thanks, enjoyed this much.
Beverly, I love the “blog” of “unnecessary” quotation marks—even if you don’t go looking for them, you’ll see quotation marks (and apostrophes) hitching rides like fleas on words that never needed the scratching. Man, some restaurant menus are wiggily with ’em (and I hope they don’t charge by the mark).
Love the idea of getting a commission on commas. Maybe you can start a comma farm, and breed them like chinchillas. But then the market might collapse.
Tom, I’ve have never been so amused by punctuation before now. What a lovely way to start the day. Thanks for making punctuation so much fun!
Beverly, glad you enjoyed it. Your comment made me think of punctuation marks all peppily lined up straight (or curved, of course) to start the day, but like me, sagging a bit as five o’clock rolled in.
Oh my word, Tommy. I am much minded of Lynne Truss’ “Eats, Shoots, and Leaves.”
nb: “mannered, foppish, sincere”
Thank you, good sir, for recognizing the superiority of the semicolon.
Joel, always good to see you out and about! Did you ever read what Vonnegut said about semicolons? One of the quotes is, “They are transvestite hermaphrodites representing absolutely nothing.” I love Vonnegut, but obviously he had a snag in his mustache that day.
Some folks proclaim that semicolons make sentences too fussy or academic; I say that semicolons suggest that you take a thought, think on it a bit, and then think further on its near-twin thought, who straightens the covers mussed by the first.
(Man, is that a convoluted, metaphor mangle of a way to say that I like the durn things!)
Some folks proclaim that semicolons make sentences too fussy or academic
Same here. I’ve heard them negatively referred to as proof someone had gone to college.
Scott, yeah, I’m sure that a prolixity of semicolons can make a piece rather precious or mannered or some such bollocks. But if they are used with restraint (“down, punctuation mark, down!), I think they can add to clarity, by suggesting the reader consider the correlation between two thoughts.
I never expected to be so delighted by … punctuation! Thank you. And now I must head off to do a school visit and try to be half as entertaining as you.
Vijaya, glad you were entertained! It’s one of those “Every dot has its day” days, where the humble punctuation mark comes out in a tux with a backing band.
I have a love/hate relationship with commas, and reading your post made me feel a little more kind to those tricky little devils. Thanks for a well-written, clever post!
They ARE tricky little devils, aren’t they? (One could look at them as being horned at both ends.) I guess commas are easier than herding cats, but they are smaller, so the challenge is on.
Thank you. In one post you have taken a good bit of the fear of punctuation out of me by giving those dots, dashes, and scary semicolons, personalities., and by describing the way they can work for us in communicating our thoughts clearly. I will never look at punctuation the same way, and that’s a good thing. This post is going in my Read Again, and Again file.
My period followed by the comma above shows even better than my words my relationship to punctuation. :)
Bernadette, as an editor and proofreader who has screamed to the heavens more times than I care to admit, “How could I have missed THAT?” I well understand our precarious relationship to punctuation.
And I still have to look up some possessives usage now and then because some sentence constructions lend themselves to ambiguity. (Or the rules have some ambiguity.) Sometimes it’s just best to recast the sentence so that the irksome mark can’t give you the fantods, a word I’m happy to steal from Mark Twain.
Well played.
I like semicolons, but only half as much as I like colons.
Are punchlines diametrically opposed to semicolon use?
I was trying to come up with a pithy response to that Keith’s well-crafted quip, but it struck me that a punch line has to be just that…punchy, quick, clean, focused. All the things that a semicolon abhors.
In other words, semicolons are the borish hammerhead that stands in the middle of the room at a mixer and tries to insert itself into everyone’s conversation, claiming to have intimate knowledge of whatever everyone is discussing.
Ah, Dr. Keith, I see you are one of the practitioners off one of the far branches of semicolonoscopy. (Yes, it had to come to this.)
Scott, not sure about the hammerhead. Perhaps just a mark wearing a barrister’s wig, a mite prissy perhaps, but with sound judgment about when a clause meets a clause meets a clause, coming through the rye. (Or the wry.) OK, I’ll stop now…
Loved this, Tom. I’ll be sharing it with my writer friends, one of whom just fawns over semicolons. Now I understand the attraction. I never knew she had a thing for rakes.
Janet, as you’ve probably already intuited, the semicolon’s bright bell of an ego will chime when someone fawns. But it will quickly brush that off with a wave of its stroke, and get back to work cleaving clauses.
OMG; OMG; OMG! A quesclamation mark! Seriously?
And now apparently actual words have gotten into the act:
“The 26-year-old violinist-slash-dancer-slash-performance-artist signed with a new agent.”
Slash is attempting to jump into the lucrative world of punctuation. Word on the street is that it is hiring needy dashes, hyphens, and minus signs at minimum wage. There was controversy earlier in this endeavor when Slash hired several ~ who it was discovered did not have proper documentation.
Mskmash, with the recession and all, there has been some wage discontent among punctuation marks, and there have been whispers of unionizing. I’ve also heard counterfeit marks thought to have originated in China are proliferating, though they lack character. Thanks for the warning.
(Hey, you’re looking a mite hangdog in your photo. Maybe time to get away from that keyboard and go for a walk?)
Oh, sorry, I thought I was replying to Mskmash, not Mksmash—I would have used different punctuation. Tsk.
I get that a lot. Also MCsmash (Can’t touch this!). Walking…
This was great fun, Tom. Thanks so much.
Jan, my distinct pleasure. Thanks back at you.
“If the period is a full stop, the comma is an intake of breath, the holding of the conductor’s baton before the wrist is flicked and the words swirl.”
Except before the last word in a series, as in “a comma, a period and a semicolon walk into a bar?”
By the way, the best writing advice I ever received was never to use semicolons. This was from an insufferable academic who by all rights should have worshiped semicolons.
Ahh rgoodman, you caught my sad state of ambivalence regarding the serial comma. Instead of wielding a righteous sword of “Always!” or an equally hortatory “Never!” I can only offer the pabulum of “Sometimes.” For me it’s much more in listening to a sentence’s melody, and if the included comma throws off the melody, I throw it off.
Or if understanding is clouded by omission, I’m for inclusion.
I’ve always aspired to be an insufferable academic myself, but never had the chops. But I can certainly be annoying.
I came across your delightful post via twitter and boy! was I smiling through and through. I love punctuation marks and love the life you have breathed into them. Just can’t wait to share this at work! Thank you:)
Trinka, very much my pleasure. (And you LOVE punctuation marks? You do realize that you’ve announced this peculiar slant of character on the Internet, don’t you? Get your CNN interview quotes in order.)