I am not a terrible writer. I've got a reputation for turning out technical documents that make complex things seem almost understandable. I somehow fluked getting a paper published when I was a mere first-year undergraduate, and was editor of my university weekly newsletter.
As a very little thing I took to writing rapidly. I would say that I've been using the written word usefully for about 27 years, and yet yesterday afternoon my relationship with writing changed completely. I am transformed. Can you tell what it is yet?
Reader, yesterday I learned how to punctuate.
Ms M has been dutifully reading my chapter drafts, and during a beautiful stroll through fields of wildflowers in the morning she commented gently on the liberal use of dashes in my writing. She had a very good point. As we chatted, it became obvious that neither of us had more than the most shaky grasp of the rules of punctuation.
Newsflash: The rules of punctuation rock!
As soon as we got back from our walk, I pulled out The Penguin Guide to Punctuation. Bloody brilliant. (Use of fragments is permitted for stylistic impact.)
I learned that - and this was a big revelation - dashes can be used to off set strong interruption. Commas, less popular in blogland, only indicate a weak interruption. Brackets are a legal substitute for either, but are preferred where the content is an aside to the reader (obviously) or is an additional level of detail.
Fantastic stuff! I couldn't put it down. Ms M "oohed" and "ahed" as I read out the exact circumstances under which it is appropriate to use an apostrophe-s to indicate a plural while she baked date and apple brownies. We are so rock and roll.
As any good geek would, I knocked up a crib-sheet (picture above) and whizzed through the first few chapters of my book with comma-confidence, banishing fudged subclauses and brandishing my new secret weapon: the colon.
It's ironic really. I would think nothing of picking up a new computer language and cramming my brain full of obscure syntax and semantics, and yet I secretly shook at the mere mention of a semi-colon. It turns out it's all quite straightforward if you're a rules-kinda-person. I am a rules-kinda-person.
