Punctuation pooh-poohs

[cjsmith]

This? Is not grammatically correct.
Neither? Is this.
It makes prose? Sound whiny and ineffective.
When I do this? Somebody please kick my butt.

Almost every time I see an ellipsis... a comma would be better.
Commas indicate natural pauses in speaking... as this seems to be trying to do.
If it's meant to add emphasis... it's not working.
When I do this... somebody please kick my butt.

Comma splices are another one, each of these should be a sentence, it drives me crazy when I have to read it, I never know if the writer has a point in mind, in fact I usually start to figure they don't, I'm probably guilty of all three of these too sometimes, maybe I should have been a grade-school English teacher, this kind of thing really jumps out at me, when I do this somebody please kick my butt.

I feel better now.

Comments

[recordersmith.livejournal.com]

I use parenthesis all the time. I haven't figured out another way to put in information that I want to have as part of the sentence, but I want to be separate from the content of the sentence itself, which I dont want as a new thought after I finish the sentence.

I also tend to write as I would speak, and I definitely dont speak gramatically. I do much more of a stream of consciousness approach.

[cjsmith.livejournal.com]

I haven't figured out a good way to do that either. Sometimes I go back and eliminate the related information entirely; sometimes I find a way to work it in; sometimes I just leave the parentheses.

I write as I would speak, too. My ungrammatical speech is full of sentence fragments. And I start sentences with conjunctions. One habit I haven't picked up, though, is putting a question mark in the middle of a thought! :-)