05-07-2014, 02:41 PM | #16 |
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agreeing with Harry T
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05-08-2014, 05:00 AM | #17 | |
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An excellent usage guide but no longer current and thus more of historical interest, is H.L. Mencken's The American Language, a multivolume treatise by one of America's premier wordsmiths. It makes for some fascinating reading. |
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05-08-2014, 05:10 AM | #18 |
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My thought is that one of the biggest mistakes I see in fiction is the over-use of the comma. It's a subtle piece of punctuation and needs to be handled with subtlety. There are those which are absolutely essential and can't be missed and there are others which can be used or left out to fit in with the writer's intention and style; the former must be present, the latter would be optional. Too many commas will slow a piece down. Slowing a piece down may or may not be desirable, depending on the context. To me, the use of puncuation can, as you hint at in your title for the thread, be flexible within the general parameters of the rules. I think it was mentioned earlier that the odd misplaced comma will not put off a reader. I agree with that. It's also true that complete misuse is likely to turn a high percentage of readers away, unless you're working with something that has a style all of its own (where you'd have to be exceptional to pull it off).
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05-08-2014, 06:43 AM | #19 | |
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Commas not only provide clarity, they also illustrate character. When you're writing from the point of view of a particular character, you have to develop a voice for that character. The use of commas, particularly the "optional" ones, is a way to capture the rhythm of their thoughts and when done properly helps distinguish scenes written in the point of view of one character from those in that of another. Commas also help in pacing; you can use them not only to slow down an introspective scene, but when you minimize your usage you can increase the urgency as well as pace of a scene. They do a lot of work in fiction, and any novelist who cares about the craft pays attention to commas. Readers may not pay as much explicit attention, but if the writer didn't use them appropriately, they will notice that things aren't working. |
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05-08-2014, 06:55 AM | #20 | |
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Precisely. Punctuation such as commas, dashes and parentheses are the written equivalent of the pauses that occur in spoken language, and each should be used appropriately to achieve the desired effect.
Eg, consider the following examples: Quote:
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05-08-2014, 01:56 PM | #21 | |
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05-12-2014, 09:37 AM | #22 | ||
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The same conjunction rule comes into similar difficulties when you hit sentences with inconvenient sub-clauses like this: 1) "It's my life and, whatever you say, I'll do what I want." 2) "It's my life, and whatever you say, I'll do what I want." I've seen style guides recommend the second, but often see first in published work when that is the intended phrasing. The issue of punctuation inside or outside quotes is also one that varies with formal vs informal. Yes, the formal British rules say the comma should go outside unless it is part of what is quoted, but in novels this doesn't happen for dialogue (a distinction I've yet to see made in style guides, but maybe I've been reading the wrong ones): Quote:
This style appears in both British and American texts. The comma in the above is not part of the quoted speech (if anything it should be a period), but that's not what happens in published novels. |
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05-12-2014, 09:53 AM | #23 | ||
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The period would be right if the dialogue was a sentence on it's own, but it's not. It gets the comma because it's only a clause; it doesn't include the main verb. |
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05-14-2014, 02:33 AM | #24 | ||
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Quote:
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05-14-2014, 12:27 PM | #25 |
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Commas are hard, and there are so many opinions. I've tried to settle on a method and then resist the urge to change when I learn something new. But I don't want to keep doing it wrong, either, if my error is critical. Sigh. Commas are hard. (Should I take out the one before "either?" Should I put the question mark outside the quotation mark? dang!)
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05-17-2014, 11:19 AM | #26 | |
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But in normal prose, I believe the first case is correct because the "and" is not part of the inessential clause which is placed between commas. |
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05-18-2014, 04:44 AM | #27 |
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05-21-2014, 10:42 AM | #28 | |
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"It's my life. Whatever you say, I'll do what I want." and wanted to join those with a conjunction I would end up with: "It's my life, and whatever you say, I'll do what I want." Are you suggesting that is incorrect in normal prose? I would argue otherwise - judging from what I've seen in professionally edited texts. If you look back over my previous post, I chose this example because it was originally two main clauses joined with a conjunction. The fact that the comma (before the "and") might be considered optional in this case does not exclude the fact that it would (also) be correct to have it there (at least when the subclause is not present). If we also place commas according to the fact the "and" is not part of the inessential clause, then we might end up with: "It's my life, and, whatever you say, I'll do what I want." which I have seen, but only rarely. It's this sort of thing that holds me back from jumping to judgment on other people's use of commas. Yes, there are places where a comma may always be considered correct (in the general sense), but there are fewer of them than many seem to assume. This is especially true when when considering narrative text. On the other hand, as suggested by my first cynical comment on this thread, there are lots of wrong places to put them. |
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05-25-2014, 10:13 PM | #29 | |
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"It's my life, and whatever you say, I'll do what I want." Here, the optional first comma separates the two main clauses ("It's my life" and "I'll do what I want"). The "whatever you say" remains a dependent clause of "I'll do what I want". "It's my life, and, whatever you say, I'll do what I want." Here the extra second comma is correct because "whatever you say" is non-essential. But because the optional first comma is retained, the second is normally removed else the sentence becomes comma-heavy. Fun stuff! Last edited by Rizla; 05-25-2014 at 10:54 PM. |
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05-30-2014, 04:06 AM | #30 |
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Yes, great fun stuff.
I thought it might have been just me, but found this quote (apparently) from Oscar Wilde: "I was working on the proof of one of my poems all the morning, and took out a comma. In the afternoon I put it back again." I'm sure if I studied the drafts of my novels I would find many such iterations, where on one reading a comma seems like a good idea and on another it seems out of place. In some cases I think I might have gone back and forth several times. ... There are some days when I grow to really dislike the humble comma. |
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