Aria Ritz Finkelstein
Daegan MillerMy contrarian #writing take? We all use too many periods, especially in nonfiction; look at them all, dozens--scores!--of periods on every page, a vast, homogeneous sea unriffled by em-dashes, ellipses, semicolons, or the much-maligned exclamation point. And to what end? Simplicity? Skimmable prose? I am here for you maximalist punctuaters!
If you’re the sort of person who saw this post and thought, “hell yeah!” may I recommend:
Guérin
petnoodle@DaeganMiller I love--- absolutely adore--- em dashes
@petnoodle YES! I tried to get my family to agree to name our dog em-dash, but, for some reason, was outvoted.
@DaeganMiller Sad! They could at least have offered en dash as a compromise, if they didn't want to go that big
Zinn@zinn @DaeganMiller that set off a coughing fit, thank you 😂
@petnoodle @DaeganMiller I live -- no, thrive -- to serve
St Brigid Press@DaeganMiller I wonder if so many periods are a more modern thing. Just look at the writing of folks like #Thoreau and #EmilyDickinson — a cornucopia of #punctuation and the uses thereof!
@stbrigidpress Thoreau even used the em-dash period combo! --.
I've never had the guts to try to pull that off....
Vicki Ziegler
Jennifer Bulman@DaeganMiller I really loath the superfluous exclamation point. The more graphic the content and the medium are, the less #punctuation is needed or wanted. #PowerPoint should have almost none and anyway the content to should be graphic not thousands of tiny words. Semi colons have their rare uses in narrative prose - but for most people it means break up your sentence.
@JenniferBulman part of what you’re hitting on, I think, is the difference between purely functional prose, whose work is to efficiently convey information, and something more literary. So technical writing, for instance, or marketing needs prose that is stripped down. Simplistic, even, for easy consumption. Not necessarily so for essays, creative nonfiction, philosophy, etc.
wrack@DaeganMiller How about not trying to impose any such strictures at all — and, in a world in which it's already hard enough to find readers, let alone connect with them, not be another dullard worried about 'form' (which is, after all, a function of punctuation) or anything else that is not the ideas, the stories? Writers these days are too quick to compose 'takes', I find, and create yet more artificial obstacles for themselves, for other writers, and their potential readers. [sigh]
@ccohanlon I suspect we agree--my "take" was a tongue-in-cheek response to the perennial "writers use too many em-dashes and semi-colons--keep it simple!" tweet/toot that makes the rounds every few weeks. Although I also think there's nothing dull in worrying about form--I *do* think that's the lifeblood of writing.