8.11.2005
Punctuation
I've been re-reading Wild Mind: Living the Writer's Life by Natalie Goldberg in an effort to kick start my stalled writing. I know that writers must be vigilant about not letting the world interfere with their writing but, alas, that is exactly what has happened this summer. But my writing lament is not the focus of this post. Let me start with a passage in the book that caught my attention:
Which made me think of the run-on sentences that so often pepper my writing. Is it because I don't know my own mind? Or because, in my overactive brain, one thought jumps to another to another and they all merge and morph and become impossible to distinguish from each other. I'll opt for the latter.
Postscript (only relevant to the title, not the content, of this post): If you're ending a sentence with "a.m." or "p.m." or initials such as "J.D." does the last period of the initial become the final period for the sentence? Or do you need an additional period (but wouldn't that look kinda odd)? My Globe & Mail Style Book does not address this issue at all. Phooey on them.
Punctuation had real significance. It signaled the beginning and the end of thought.
"And if punctuation is about thought," I thought, "then in order to punctuate, we have to know our mind, to know what we think, and when one thought stops and the other begins. We have to understand the journey of thought, how thought moves around in our mind."
Which made me think of the run-on sentences that so often pepper my writing. Is it because I don't know my own mind? Or because, in my overactive brain, one thought jumps to another to another and they all merge and morph and become impossible to distinguish from each other. I'll opt for the latter.
Postscript (only relevant to the title, not the content, of this post): If you're ending a sentence with "a.m." or "p.m." or initials such as "J.D." does the last period of the initial become the final period for the sentence? Or do you need an additional period (but wouldn't that look kinda odd)? My Globe & Mail Style Book does not address this issue at all. Phooey on them.
Labels: writing
Comments:
Well, my Globe & Mail Style Guide may have let me down, but I checked my "Grammar for Grownups" that says, "It is unnecessary to add a period if the sentence already ends in one." So no silly looking double periods (which just looked wrong, in any case), I'm now free to end a sentence with p.m. Woohoo!
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