You guessed it! This guy who has spent his life in an scholastic straightjacket, applying to the nation's most competitive colleges and one Canadian school (only to become disgusted by academia), as well as having entered the newspaper industry, knows all to well the importance of maintaining a Standard Written English.

In fact, I've been offered an chance to take the copyediting internship test at the local Hearst paper today.

Despite this, there is a concept called poetic license, in which the writer, as artist, manipulates the language to further his ends or the ends of the work being created.

In the fiction forum, there is a tendency to keep to a very conservative Strunk and White usage rules regarding commas and semicolons.

Despite this, I have studied some acting, have read Shakespeare, enjoy poetry readings, and with all the poets on this site (yeah that 95% of the members), share an enjoyment of the oral art of poetry reading.

So then, is it alright to say that a comma and a semi-colon not only function to separate similar clauses to different degrees, but also function to give the reader a signal as to how long he or she should read or "breath" in considering a passage? Can the rules be bent? Should they? I, of course, am a beginning writer.

This problem just came up as I was writing.

Also my formal training in the cello accentuates the importance placed on breathing in conveying any artistic piece to an audience.

Thank you,
Alvaro

[This message has been edited by alvaro.alarcon (edited April 01, 2004).]

Can the rules be bent? - if there's a house style, you follow it.
is it alright to say that a comma and a semi-colon not only function to separate similar clauses to different degrees, but also function to give the reader a signal as to how long he or she should read or "breath" in considering a passage? - yes, though the 2 styles may not sit together well. From "Reading and Listening", B. Engler, Franke Verlag Bern, 1982.
o punctuation may be grammatical-logical or rhythmical-oratorical. Lack of punctuation "may create ambiguities and force the passive reader to become active", p.27.
o "there was a movement away from rhythmical- oratorical punctuation to grammatical-logical usage between about 1580 and 1680....It was only in the decade of the 1840's that the grammatical-logical theories finally triumphed.", p.55 (quoting Mindele Triep).
o The text may reflect whether it's for listening or reading - visual/aural elements, difficulty, length, poet/audience relationship.

Alvaro,

My capsule response to this would be:

1. Edit the poem for grammar first; the punctuation should serve first as a tool to eliminate grammatical/syntactical ambiguities that the author does not desire to be present.

2. That done, review the poem from an "aural" perspective and introduce, as needed, punctuation to reinforce a certain "phrasing" in the work, provided that such "additional" punctuation (or removal of same) does not introduce unwanted grammatical/syntactical ambiguities.

3. In any event, within a given poem remain consistent to whatever "rule" of punctuation you adopt/devise.

Hope this helps...

(robt)

Alvaro--

"Logical" punctuation, the kind taught by Strunk & White, works in
prose to keep the language clear and understandable. It's always
"safe" to stick to those rules. In formal prose, such as formal essays,
dissertations, and the like, anyone would do well to follow the rules
strictly.

But "oratorical" punctuation--the use of punctuation marks to affect
rhythm and sound in prose--has a place, too. Sometimes, in fiction or
in personal essays, dropping a mark or adding one does good work. I
always recommend that fiction writers read their works aloud and
listen to the way they sound, if they can't do it in their heads. I find it
astonishing that in critique groups prose rhythm is so seldom
mentioned, for it's vital to good writing.

Only the most dedicated purists insist that people always follow the
logical rules for commas; for that one mark, the rules are simply too
restrictive. The trouble is, people often forget the "oratorical"
function of commas. I just gave Sherri hell in the Fiction forum for
leaving out way too many--that lack made her work hard to
understand on first reading. The last thing you want to do is make the
reader stop to figure out what you're on about.

Punctuation is, alas, an art. Good writers use it to advantage, but they
know the rules, and, usually instinctively, know exactly when to break
them.

Carter

I think I've been reminded by you guys of the need to remain vigilant in writing, to never become complacent, and to be one hundred per cent sure of how I use a comma or semicolon. It sounds easy, but now that I've taken the copyediting test, I know that the English language has many nuances that only a select few people have a clear conception of.

As a writer, I think it is imperative that I have a clear conception of when and how to use a semicolon; I hope all goes well.

Alvaro

I agree with Carter here:

"The last thing you want to do is make the
reader stop to figure out what you're on about."

UNLESS, of course, the punctuation is meant to make the reader stop and reconsider. Generally, standard punctuation guides the reader.

Reading aloud is another matter. The text you read from should be considered your SCRIPT, and you should mark it up whatever way helps you to deliver an excellent reading.

Bob

Clawson,

"Hear! Hear!" chants the deaf-man-who-reads...

(robt)

Alvaro, I hope you won’t be offended if I point out that there are more basic matters to examine in your use of English than the nuances of commas and semicolons.

Your initial post on this thread reveals a number of basic "mechanical" problems if we go by generally accepted current standards of correctness or literacy. I’ll list them below. If you had made only one or two errors I might have assumed them to be typos, but there are quite a number. A writer or editor needs to be at home with all the basics, so you have work to do. Perhaps the copy-editing test you mention will have given you the same message.

I offer the following in a spirit of helpfulness, and as someone with substantial experience in writing and copy-editing.

Para 1 of your post has "an scholastic straightjacket" (need "a" before a consonant sound) and "all to well" (should be "too").

Para 2 has "an chance" (needs "a" again).

Para 4 has "a... usage rules" z(no article needed).

Para 6 has "alright" (still, I believe, unrecognized as a legitimate English word — use "all right"). And the word "breath" is the noun (breth); the verb is breathe.

Forgive me: I don’t even know if English is your native language. But if you are making these errors after a normal school education in English, you probably need to read more attentively — not on the Internet, where faulty English is rife, but offline prose by good writers.

There is no way to be "one hundred per cent sure" about comma or semicolon use. Robert and Carter have made some good observations. Rules are just generalisations: your decision may coincide with a rule most of the time, but you need to develop your own judgement.

For example, some people condemn the "comma splice" — using a comma instead of a semicolon (say) to join independent clauses or sentences. By this rule it’s wrong to write "I came, I saw, I conquered" even though that’s the usual rendering of the Latin original. But try replacing the commas by semicolons or periods. Don’t you lose some of the essence of the boastful claim, namely the implication that the conquering was an inevitable consequence of the coming and the seeing?

Or consider a sentence like this in a story: “He fretted, he sweated, he trembled, his heart raced.” I wouldn’t hesitate to use commas there, as each short clause really underlines and develops the same idea, which the pace reinforces. But possibly you might want semicolons or periods — depending on the context, the general style, and what you’re trying to convey. In these matters, a rule is only a general guide.

Henry


[This message has been edited by Henry Quince (edited April 02, 2004).]

Henry you're right as I made many mistakes, but then again this is the Internet, so who gives a hoot?!

Alvaro

[This message has been edited by alvaro.alarcon (edited April 02, 2004).]

If that's your attitude, Alvaro, then why in hell should anybody give a hoot about responding to your questions?

Well, Michael, I've been using the Internet for over a decade now, and I know that poor grammar should not impede communication over that medium.

Secondly, anyone on this site has the nerve to think I haven't built up a basic confidence in the language skills of my native language? Sorry, I'm a little smarter than that, and I don't come to this site yearning for acceptance of what I put down on the screen.

Thirdly, I do other things, many other things, than come here--quite frankly I don't have the resources to focus on producing a post on a discussion forum that has the same level of care that I would put into a letter sent to the editor of my local paper.

Lastly, why is a noticeable minority of folks on this site so stiff?

If I get kicked off by one of the bosses, many of whom are kind, so be it, no great loss. That is the sad reality.

Alvaro

[This message has been edited by alvaro.alarcon (edited April 02, 2004).]

Alvaro -

Thank you. That was very instructive.

I really don't have the time to engage in discussions of this nature. I don't think this site suits my needs currently.

If I have a recommendation to the management, it is this: make the site open only to individuals through election by the membership.

Alvaro

Oy.... I'm glad we got that straightened out. I'll be sure to run a benefits analysis before I edit any of my posts to a higher standard, in future. As my brother Paco is wont to say, "Debate over commas, semicolons, and the proper usage of the subjunctive is for people who don't have a life," a category of existence (?) that fits me to a tee.

Golf, anyone?

(robt)

Alvaro, I was sure somebody was going to point out the misspelled words and typos in your initial post. As an editor, you'll have to perform that service for other people, so why should your own writing be exempt? And if, as an editor, you require writers to fix their prose, what will be your response it they come back with a defensive "who gives a hoot?"

I would think you would give a hoot, having asked about the pertinence of punctuation as an aid to clarity in communication. The reason for punctuation is exactly to avoid miscommunication. You may relax the rules if you are sure there is only one way to read a text; often that is not the case. Since the writer knows exactly what he means, he may well be unaware of the confusion or hilarity his inadvertent misusage provokes. Here is an example taken from Jan Iwaszkiewicz's "The Squatter's Son" in the Deep End, where the lack of a comma creates a comic effect:

As though we’re convicts, all our hair's been shorn
for fear of lice and numbered left to right,
we're goaded by the most appalling spite
from petty men.

I have a picture of all these men's hairs being shorn and numbered from left to right. Consider the difference a simple comma can make:

As though we’re convicts, all our hair's been shorn
for fear of lice, and numbered left to right,
we're goaded by the most appalling spite
from petty men.

Henry, each of the examples you gave is a series in which the final conjunction is omitted for rhetorical purposes:

I came, I saw, I conquered.
He fretted, he sweated, he trembled, his heart raced.

While a semicolon or an end stop between clauses would work, the effect would be slightly different. By using commas instead, the speaker connects each clause to the other parts of the sequence rather than making it an independent or unrelated statement.

If you have independent clauses that are not part of a sequence, or series, commas don't work in formal English. For example, a comma would not work in the case of these two unconnected independent clauses:

He fretted, the phone rang.

What we see on the internet is a bastardizing of the language for speed's sake. Besides, one does not have to be an editor or a writer to own and operate a computer.

Carol

Alvaro--

It's true that in many places on the Internet good grammar, courtesy,
and any mark of civil behavior is unimportant. Oddly enough,
however, in certain niches that's not the case.

A place like the Sphere is chock full of people to whom language
matters a great deal. They live it and breathe it, and wouldn't think of
committing a solecism in public, though they might speak or write
colloquially on occasion. And many of them, consciously or
unconsciously, will think less of someone who is careless about such
things. Even on Usenet, in alt.english.usage, someone who makes a
grammatical error in a post is quite likely to be the object of snide
comment.

Whether this is a good thing is beside the point--it's just the way
things are. Many people wear nothing but T-shirts and baseball caps,
but they would be severely underdressed at the average formal
dinner. I happen to be glad such islands of relatively formality exist in
the swamp of the Internet, but that's beside the point, too.

Whoever first said something about acting like a Roman when you're
in Rome had something--Romans in those days, and now, for that
matter, tend to sneer when they peg someone as a barbarian.

I rather doubt that Admin types get their knickers in a twist even
when someone mixes this place up with a Red Sox fan list, but the
judges are lurking everywhere, and life is smoother for those who fit
nicely into the local culture.

Carter

I'm sorry for my behavior--it reflects a certain callousness of spirit.

I'm sorry if I can't put more care into my posts; it is just that quite frankly whenever I post something on this site I'm in my "zone-out" mode, that I'm decompressing from a day's work. I realize that many people put more care into their postings here.

As a result I'll try to maintain a discrete presence, and Carol I feel grateful for your perspective and empathy, and I understand that I should not try to impose my values on a site designed for hundreds of people, many of whom are semi-professional or even professional poetry writers.


Alvaro

I'd like to add a postscript to this discussion--in spite of the person who said (or whose brother said) that debate over commas etc. is for those who don't have a life--because I happen to edit for a living. Where I work (on a commercial magazine), one guideline is "the fewer commas the better"--i.e., if it's clear without one, don't add one. However, as a poet and musician, I am often inclined to add commas for exactly the reason you've described: to insert a "breath," or a point to stop and think. And then I sometimes have to fight for those commas to be left in!

Claudia

I follow textbook comma rules for prose--I rarely violate them. But I suppose that principle won't work for everybody.

I think Claudia might agree that being an editor is good training for a
writer. The buck really stops on that side of the desk.

I've been a professional copy editor for a newspaper, an unpaid e-zine
editor, and a teacher of prose writing. In every one of those jobs I've
had to argue with writers who haven't got it through their heads that
punctuation is an absolutely vital part of the writing process, just
as important as grammar. If you want to be understood, to get over
the exact meaning you're looking for, to control the rhythm of your
work, your punctuation has to be right.

Recently a book on punctuation has been an actual best-seller in
Britain--Lynne Truss's "Eats, Shoots & Leaves." It's either already
out in the US or will be this month. I couldn't wait, so I ordered it
from Canada, and I assure you it's hilarious as well as instructive. As
you might guess from the title, her major point is that bad
punctuation produces ambiguity.

The rules aren't hard to learn. If you don't want editors giving
you a hard time, learn them. Violate them when that's the thing to do,
but know them so well you can argue with anybody. Most important,
learn how to make punctuation work for you, not against you.

Carter

I forgot to mention that when I was an editor helping to make
decisions on what would get published, I was immediately biased me
in favor of a piece in which the punctuation was well done. Whether it
broke the rules or not, I knew I was dealing with a pro, even if the
author had never been published before.

And, yes, I know that some famous writers let their editors do their
punctuation. That was then; editors don't operate that way now.

Carter

Alvaro,

As a person that has dedicated his life to the proper standard usage of the English language and feels duty bound to stamp out ill-usage when it is found anywhere in the print media or on the net it is obvious that all the tools provided by proper punctuation and standard rules are quite sufficient to express all aspects of writing from stogie scientific writing to those pieces using dialectal nuances indigenous to a neighborhood or social class it can all be done in the common usage of the people without sentence fragment or sloppy writing littered with misplaced ands or buts.

Bobby


------------------
Visit Bobby's Urban Rage Poetry Page at:

www.prengineers.com/poetry

Thanks

LOL, Bobby. You are making a joke, yes?

Carol

Bobby is what would have been called a purist in about 1918--and, by golly, he has a right to be!

Carter

Ummmm.... Claudia.... As it happens I'm a professional editor also, or was anyway before I retired. The referenced comment was voiced (true fact) by my brother Paco when he was expressing (as he often does) his disdain for what he considers to me anally-fixated compulsion tocrusade on behalf of the proper use of the diacritical in written communication.

The comment was ironic, and meant to be a jab at alvaro, who was at that time on a most instructive rant.

(robt)

Is Alvaro not a sufficient jab at himself?
24--no, make it 25--postings, and 240--no, 241--hits for a lazy question--about commas. I'm amazed (no judgment intended, just amazed).

Carol,

Well perhaps just a tad.

Eschew punctuation always.

Bobby


------------------
Visit Bobby's Urban Rage Poetry Page at:

www.prengineers.com/poetry

Thanks

Carter (and others),

Yes, I think being an editor has been very good training for me as a writer. So was having a 2nd-grade teacher who actually mapped (or charted) sentences on the blackboard. Grammar and punctuation are tools of clear expression, and thus of clear thinking. And what can be more essential to poems (and prose) than that? How can we see our way through to a complex idea if, halfway through a sentence, suddenly the subject of a verb is in question? Or, if the poet is presenting an anomaly, we need to trust his or her competence in order to know it is deliberate.

For example: someone read me a poem by Ted Kooser -- sorry but I don't remember the title -- about a snowy night and a dog who, as I recall, has snowflakes in his eyelashes. But I believe the subject of the last sentence is the night (in any case it's definitely not the dog), which is shaking the snowflakes out of the dog's lashes. If this is deliberate, then it's a striking, animistic idea. If not, then it's totally clumsy. We have to be able to rely on poets KNOWING how to construct proper sentences, in order to trust that when there is an anomaly, it has meaning.

(Incidentally, if anyone has the title of the poem, I'd appreciate it.)

Claudia

Robt,

Yes, I got that. And I like your three-step method.

Oh, and Carter: that book "Eats, Shoots & Leaves" was featured in a small item in a magazine that arrived at my office today -- Newsweek? It looks like fun, so I hope it catches on here.

Claudia


[This message has been edited by Claudia Gary Annis (edited April 06, 2004).]

Claudia -

"It Was a Dark and Stormy Night"? (Oh, wait, I think that was by Kelly, not Kooser.)

Alvaro, this was your thread, so let’s return to you. I certainly agree that most of us don’t take the same trouble in composing messages here as we might in writing a story or poem. So we make the odd mistake, and our phraseology or construction may be ad hoc. But if we’ve mastered basics like the use of singular and plural, or of articles and possessives, it’s more natural — and takes no more time — to get these things right than to get them wrong. If you repeatedly make certain types of errors, that suggests you’re not completely assured in the basics. If so, it might be more important to look at that problem first and worry about the niceties of semicolons later.

Rules can do more harm than good when used as a substitute for your own thought and judgement. I once worked with someone about 40 years old who always put a semicolon before a "but", whatever the context: a teacher had taught him that rule, he said. So, for example, he would have written "We have nothing to eat; but potatoes...". He wasn’t stupid, but in 30 years none of his reading, none of the thousands of examples he must have seen of the word "but" without a semicolon before it, had dislodged that misguided rule from his mind.

Carol, regarding those lines of Jan’s:

As though we’re convicts, all our hair's been shorn
for fear of lice[,] and numbered left to right,
we’re goaded by the most appalling spite
from petty men.

— you’re right of course that the comma after "lice" is an improvement. But it doesn’t fully fix the problem, since the "and numbered..." clause might still be read (initially) as referring to the hair. Indeed, a clause in that position after the comma might well be intended to be read in that way. Suppose we had, in prose, "As though we’re convicts, our heads have been shorn for fear of lice or God-knows-what other suspected infestation, and scrubbed with disinfectant, and painted purple." We’d surely want the commas after "infestation" and "disinfectant" to make the listing of the three treatments clear, as well as for the rhythm of the sentence.

No, strictly it needs to be something like "for fear of lice; and, numbered left to right,..." Which brings us back to semicolons. (Actually, that particular construction strikes me as a bit fussy in a poem, particularly one in the form of a letter from a young soldier, so I’d be tempted to rephrase it as "for fear of lice. We’re numbered left to right / and goaded....". Punctuation puzzles can often signal the need for structural revision.)

If you’re reading this, Jan, forgive me for making merry with your text!

Henry

With some trepidation I'm returning to this discussion. With regards to the topic, I'll follow D. Warren's advice. With regards to my ability to write in the English language, I'll say for the record that I have contributed regular articles to newspapers in the Albany, NY area. So yes, Henry, I know English as well as you do, and also, and I think this is important, I enjoy a good reputation with some local journalists with regards to my work. I've had some professors at an elite institution say good words about my writing.

But that is work, and Erato quite frankly is play. PLAY PLAY PLAY FUN AND GAMES NOTHING SERIOUS. And seriously, I try to maintain a sense of humor and give myself leeway to make mistakes. So I made a few. Let me bear my cross.

So perhaps with that attitude I had best remain reticent on this site.

And also, I don't like to deceive people, but I'm not exactly straightforward either. Schmoozer I am.

Sometimes I communicate in code, best,
Alvaro

those wishing to continue the discussion with me on a personal level can do so by writing alvaro.alarcon@lycos.com.

[This message has been edited by alvaro.alarcon (edited April 07, 2004).]

Alvaro, Erato is for PLAY, sure, but it is also a writing WORKshop. As a group we tend to take the nuts and bolts of writing seriously. That doesn't mean we don't use shortcuts or break the rules ourselves when we think the occasion calls for it.

Carol

Carol moderators as good as you uphold the place's standards and keep it running. Keep at it!

I'm not trying to change the place; in fact, my number of postings dropped dramatically in the past month. When I can fit in, I'll add my word or two.

Alvaro