Fri Oct 14, '22- Writing Mechanics: Pausing Punctuation
Slightly late edition this morning as I am prepping to record for my other podcast shortly! If you are at all a fan of aggressively average movies, you should consider checking out the B-Siders- we’re pretty funny.
All that to say, some mornings are an absolute crush of preparation, recording, writing, and editing. Before the 9-5 comes the 5-9. It’s invigorating, but it also demands a lot of focus and discipline. And some mornings, that is easier to muster than others.
Pour another cup of coffee and crack your knuckles. It’s writing time!
Demystifying Language: Pausing Punctuation
There feels a certain peril to the punctuation of pauses and their proper implementation in prose, poetry and… some word for ‘academic journalism’ that starts with ‘p.’
Alliteration jokes aside, one of the most common questions I see floating around on writers’ Twitter is, “do you know how to use a semicolon?” And it’s a fair question. Periods, commas, dashes, and semicolons all seem to have pretty nebulous rules. Utilizing each effectively can help dictate the pace and tone of a piece. The funny thing is, our mind instinctively knows how to read something with each one of those punctuation types, yet when we try to write them, it introduces a host of questions.
So let’s shallow dive each one and take a moment to examine how each of these punctuations should be deployed.
Today’s writing demystification: punctuation.
Periods: The period is the simplest and least confusing of the ‘pause’ punctuations. It comes at the end of a sentence. We talked a little about sentence structure in our examination of the split infinitive, but let’s quickly review. A sentence is a series of words conveying a single thought. Grammatically, a sentence should contain a subject and a predicate, though, in some storytelling and artistic prose, this is not strictly necessary. Sentences can vary in length, and several like ‘clauses’ may be linked together with modifying words like ‘and’ or ‘though’ or ‘however.’ When the thought is completed, it is ended with a period.
That’s it. Put a period at the end of your sentences. Not super confusing.
Commas: So this is where things start to get a little more mercurial. In the context of this article, we’re strictly looking at the comma as a pausing mechanism, or as a linking mechanism. We won’t be looking at how it is deployed for lists. This includes multiple adjectives, dates and times, and geographical locations- those are ideas for another day.
When it comes to correct comma usage, it is critical to be able to identify the clauses within a sentence. The easiest of these to identify is when you use a linking word, such as “and,” “but,” “or” and others. When using a conjunction, the comma comes BEFORE the joining word. So if you are adding additional detail that directly modifies the initial thought, or clause, of a sentence, drop in a comma before your linking word.
Commas can also be used to offset additional information to a sentence that is not strictly necessary. Sometimes this is confused with correct parentheses usage, but parentheses are typically best saved for more “informational” asides, such as dates, locations, etc. Whereas comma asides add more descriptive information that isn’t critical to the sentence’s key thought but adds flavor. Think along the lines of: “My robe, made from synthetic silk, had fallen off its hook and was crumpled on the floor.” It’s not necessary that you know what the robe is made of, but helps you better picture how it might look crumpled on the floor based on its material. A comma aside helps with this.
It’s best to think of commas as linking tools. In grade school, I was taught that commas were pauses in a thought, leading to some really unhealthy comma usage on my part. While we do tend to pause when we arrive at a comma, this is almost always an artifact of linking multiple clauses together.
If you want your readers to truly PAUSE, you should probably be using a period. The great danger of linking too many clauses together with commas is the run-on sentence. Be wary of this.
Dashes: For the context of this article, we’ll be speaking to dashes as their use in asides and abrupt pauses, not to link like words (a hyphen) or when a word gets cut off in dialogue.
Like commas, dashes can be used to separate out information in a sentence that is not strictly necessary. The difference between when to use dashes on either side of a separated thought versus commas is a little tricky. Dashes tend to be used when the presented information is considered more emphatic or even surprising.
This is where dashes are more or less a matter of opinion than hard, fast rules. You are still creating an aside; however, the information in the aside is likely to be of a more unexpected nature, or something you really want to emphasize. If we use our example from before, let’s change a single word and use dashes instead of commas.
“My robe- made of chainmail- had fallen off its hook and was crumpled on the floor.”
Holy cow! A chainmail robe! THAT is surprising!
Dashes are ultimately more informal and far more likely to appear in artistic works or storytelling prose than in professional or academic works. For that reason, their true usage is a little vague. Just be careful not to OVERUSE them; otherwise, your prose will come across halting and jerky. Just as we pause when we read a comma, we pause when we read a dash. We just pause a lot more, which ultimately slows down the pace.
Semicolons: Goodness me, the freaking semicolon. Grammar’s Rubik’s Cube. Only I can solve a Rubick’s Cube.
Okay, so the semicolon is not nearly as intimidating as it seems; it just has very specific rules that require a little thought. I’m going to preface this by saying: if you are debating whether to use a semicolon, you are probably just as well served dividing that sentence into two separate ones. That will lead to quicker-paced prose. But, if fast-paced is not necessarily your goal and you want to have those nice long, cursive sentences, let’s discuss semicolons.
The semicolon joins two independent but related clauses in a sentence. In place of a colon and a conjucntion word (remember when we talked about and, but, or, etc?), we use a semicolon instead. Semicolons are often followed by qualifiers like ‘however’ or ‘otherwise’ but this is not strictly necessary.
It is important to note that if the two clauses you are joining are DEPENDENT on one another. If the first half of a sentence directly informs the later portion, a semicolon cannot be used. The two ideas must be independent of each other- but related.
For example: “Although my MLA Handbook is extremely useful for writing; Tobin’s Spirit Guide is not.” This is INCORRECT semicolon usage, and it’s pretty obvious why. These two clauses are dependent on one another and should be separated with a coma instead.
Conversely: “The frying pan is still hot; however, we need to clean it quickly.” These two ideas are related but independent of one another. They are joined together by the semicolon and the modifier ‘however.’
When you’re reading through your work and wondering if you should use a semicolon or a comma, ask yourself the following questions to pin it down.
Are these two ideas related to one another? Are they independent of each other, or does one require the other to make sense? Finally: would this read better as two sentences, or does the flow become too choppy, and therefor these should be joined together?
Semicolons. Good luck.
That’s all for today’s dive into pausing punctuation. If you have any additional questions or want more clarification on these topics, let me know! I’d love to do a follow-up on some of the nuances of a few of these and really deep dive into their proper usage. Hopefully, though, today, you are walking away with a clearer idea of how to deploy each of these tools.
Since this article is a little longer we are going to skip our writing prompt for today and look ahead to tomorrow.
Happy Friday everyone- I hope you are headed into a wonderful weekend. Be excellent to each other.
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