This relates to my last post, but I wanted to make this as a seperate point. This helps to explain why there are certain people who I have to make a serious effort not to ignore when they are writing. In particular, the last point he makes.
From: Writing Tips for Non-Writers Who Don't Want to Work at Writing
1. Punctuate, damn you: For God's sake, is it really so hard to know where to put a comma?
When people read, even in their brains, there's usually some part of them that is sounding out the words. Without appropriate punctuation, especially commas, that word-speaking part will eventually choke on the sentence. Having said that, there's a tendency to over-punctuate as well, particularly with exclamation points. Too little punctuation makes it seem you want to collapse someone's lung, too much makes it look like you're a 14-year-old girl writing an IM. You want to avoid both.
Here's a quick and dirty guide when to use punctuation:
- Periods: When you're writing down a thought and you're at the end of that thought, put a period.
- Commas: When you're writing down a thought and you want to take a breath, whether mental or physical, put in a comma.
- Semi-colon: Put these in your writing in the place where, in conversation, you'd arch your eyebrow or make some other sort of physical gesture signalling that you want to emphasize a point.
- Colon: Use when you want to make an example of something: For example, just like this.
- Question Mark: Quite obviously, when you have a question.
- Exclamation point: When you're really excited about something. You almost never need to use more than one in a paragraph. Use more than one in a sentence and you damn well better be using it for humorous and/or ironic effect.
- Dashes: You can use these when you've already used a colon or a semi-colon in a sentence, but be aware that if you have more than one colon or semi-colon in a sentence, you're probably doing something wrong.
Somewhat related: Use capitals when you should (beginning of sentences, proper nouns), don't use them when you shouldn't (pretty much every other time). Lots of people think not using capitals makes them look arty and cool, but generally it just makes the rest of us wonder if you've not yet figured out the magical invention known as the shift key. Alternately, the random appearance of capitals in inappropriate places makes us wonder if you don't secretly wish the Germans won World War II (and even the Germans are cracking down on wanton capitalization these days, so there you are).
