As I'm creating Write Well University, I read grammar and writing books like bored housewives read Harlequin romance novels (if you're a bored housewife who does not read Harlequin romance novels, I apologize for the generalization). My new favorite is Roy Peter Clark's Writing Tools: 50 Essential Strategies for Every Writer. I'll be incorporating this into my Writing Essentials Program. As a matter of fact, I've changed the program from a twenty-week program to a twenty-four-week program just so that I can have my students read two tips a week (plus two somewhere in the program).
It's a fabulous book, and one I recommend to anyone who wants to write anything. The tips are fairly short, two to four pages each, on average, and very well-written (one would hope so!). Clark's tips add something more to the veteran's well-stocked writing tool chest as well as help build up the beginner's tool stock.
Here's how Clark describes using punctuation:
Think of a long, well-written sentence with no punctuation except the period. Such a sentence is a straight road with a stop sign at the end. The period is the stop sign. Now think of a winding road with a lot of stop signs. That analogy describes a paragraph with lots of periods, an effect that will slow the pace of the story. The writer may desire such a pace for strategic reasons: to achieve clarity, convey emotion, or create suspense.
If a period is a stop sign, then what kind of traffic flow is created by the other marks? The comma is a speed bump; the semicolon is what a driver education teacher calls a “rolling stop”; the parenthetical expression is a detour; the colon is a flashing yellow light that announces something important up ahead; the dash is a tree branch in the road.
Clark's metaphor for punctuation helps us understand why we use punctuation as well as how.
Please drive carefully. :-)
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