Is there a way to know when to put punctuation into pieces of writing since i have trouble with that?
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I bought the Penguin Book of Punctuation, the Penguin Book of Grammar, and the Penguin Book of Plain English in a charity shop. I highly recommend them.
There are rules of punctuation and they are finite, but you build the sentences and they can be built in any way you want. The punctuation you use is down to the timing and rhythm you want in the sentence. I remember a time when I didn't think it that important and hoped I could just get someone to correct my MS when I'd finished.
So I left most of the punctuation out in my first draft, only adding the odd comma when it was necessary for the elimination of ambiguity. When my first readers read back to me sentences they didn't understand, I was amazed. I heard those sentences emphasised in a completely different way in my head and the meanings were lost without the correct timings and emphasis in the sentence. I realised I was going to have to learn to properly punctuate and at the time everyone was still talking about Eats, Shoots and Leaves. Lynne Truss's guide puts the rules of punctuation into context so you see each mark's varied uses. It also helps with sentence style, something your bog standard guide doesn't do. It's an interesting and entertaining read, which can't be said for many books on the same subject, and really gets you thinking about how spoken English should look on the page. For me it meant the story in my head finally made it to the page in a way that actually reached the reader - yay!
It's funny how we often think words will work their magic as long as they're in the right order and that that is storytelling. That's what I used to think. But actually, storytelling is reaching a reader in the intended way so the message of the story comes across clearly and at the right moment. It is as essential as perfecting your main character because all your carefully crafted sentences come together to form one voice. That voice has to be clear, clever, entertaining and unwavering to keep the reader's attention and, sadly, nothing destroys those four things quicker than a badly placed comma.
So the answer is to read, to learn and to understand. There is no quick remedy because understanding is not about learning a formula by rote. Your library or local book shop will have a copy of Eats, Shoots and Leaves and I recommend it, not as a definitive guide, but as a good start. Lynne Truss is able to entertain and inform without making you feel like a complete dunce, which is always nice!
I bought the Penguin Book of Punctuation, the Penguin Book of Grammar, and the Penguin Book of Plain English in a charity shop. I highly recommend them.
Thanks so much Victoria that makes me feel so much better considering im not alone in having problems with punctuation.
There are rules of punctuation and they are finite, but you build the sentences and they can be built in any way you want. The punctuation you use is down to the timing and rhythm you want in the sentence. I remember a time when I didn't think it that important and hoped I could just get someone to correct my MS when I'd finished.
So I left most of the punctuation out in my first draft, only adding the odd comma when it was necessary for the elimination of ambiguity. When my first readers read back to me sentences they didn't understand, I was amazed. I heard those sentences emphasised in a completely different way in my head and the meanings were lost without the correct timings and emphasis in the sentence. I realised I was going to have to learn to properly punctuate and at the time everyone was still talking about Eats, Shoots and Leaves. Lynne Truss's guide puts the rules of punctuation into context so you see each mark's varied uses. It also helps with sentence style, something your bog standard guide doesn't do. It's an interesting and entertaining read, which can't be said for many books on the same subject, and really gets you thinking about how spoken English should look on the page. For me it meant the story in my head finally made it to the page in a way that actually reached the reader - yay!
It's funny how we often think words will work their magic as long as they're in the right order and that that is storytelling. That's what I used to think. But actually, storytelling is reaching a reader in the intended way so the message of the story comes across clearly and at the right moment. It is as essential as perfecting your main character because all your carefully crafted sentences come together to form one voice. That voice has to be clear, clever, entertaining and unwavering to keep the reader's attention and, sadly, nothing destroys those four things quicker than a badly placed comma.
So the answer is to read, to learn and to understand. There is no quick remedy because understanding is not about learning a formula by rote. Your library or local book shop will have a copy of Eats, Shoots and Leaves and I recommend it, not as a definitive guide, but as a good start. Lynne Truss is able to entertain and inform without making you feel like a complete dunce, which is always nice!