After reading my assignment on Sam Leith, I realised many of my sentences didn't seem to make much sense! They were far too long winded, with many 'ands' which gave the effect of my writing dragging on and on, generally making it a very boring read.
After my class on Monday, I realised there was an easy way to fix this. Punctuation! I replaced the many 'ands' for commas, and added full stops to break my sentences up and make them read much better than they did before. I feel this improved my work immensely; however I also discovered the true use of a semicolon! Now I could write my long sentences, but just ensure I added a semicolon where appropriate- this meant my writing was much more coherent.
After re reading my assignment I noticed I made some silly mistakes that could easily have been avoided. I didn't put the name of the mini saga in quotation marks- ie "the Inner Man".
Overall, the idea of punctuation is actually a strange one. I think I do punctuation without any conscious thought, but once told to think about it, I feel that's when I realise just how complex it can be! I have never really been taught properly when to use punctuation, and when not to use it. I suppose I have picked it up over my academic life, or from reading numerous books and writing from many different sources. After Monday's lesson, I realised just how ambiguous punctuation can be, for example the oxford comma. I was always taught to never use a comma before the word "and" yet was quite fascinated to see how many people had been doing the opposite. I was also intrigued to see how people could use a lot of punctuation, and some could use hardly any which could make a meaning and tone of a paragraph appear completely different!
I think I have learnt, that with punctuation as long as you're consistent to your own style, then your writing should at least make some sense. I think the main purpose of punctuation is to enable your writing to read well, so as long as your punctuation enables you to do this, then I think you're on the right track!
Some wise words there, Sarah. I think make good observations about punctuation, and your conclusion that its chief purpose is "to enable your writing to read well" is spot on. For me it's all about helping the reader to understand whatever point that you are making. Incidentally, your punctuation in this post is just about perfect. There's one small slip, but if you can find and correct it, nobody else will ever see and this comment will be made to look stupid.
ReplyDeleteCan you post your edited version of last weeks' writing to your blog so that I can see the improvements you've made?
As you mentioned, punctuations are difficult to make use of effectively. It seems that there are some grammatical basic rules on the coursebook, which are often confusing for English learners because their definitions tends to be quite ambiguous; however, it is understandable they do so since there are lots of exceptions.
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