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

[tiger-spot.livejournal.com]

But sometimes? It's just the effect you're looking for. Grammatical correctness is nice, but breaking it occasionally is really useful for stylistic reasons. "Occasionally" is important there; you can take my ellipses away when you pry them from my cold dead keyboard, but they are awfully easy to overuse. These two examples particularly are intended to show how the sentence would be spoken, but listening to someone speak like that all the time would be just as annoying as reading it.

I am totally with you on the comma splices, though.

[cjsmith.livejournal.com]

"Occasionally" is indeed important. I'm probably guilty of reading too much LiveJournal. I'm filled up to quota on all three of these until at least 2012.

Time to Fire up the Ass-Kicking Machine

[psi-star-psi.livejournal.com]

I used to worry about these things...but not so much anymore.

[I'm covering up my head!]

(I apologize for being a contributing source of your pain. I will endeavor to finish rereading The Deluxe Transitive Vampire. I will then finally read Eats, Shoots, and Leaves.)

Re: Time to Fire up the Ass-Kicking Machine

[cjsmith.livejournal.com]

It seems to me that your internal worrier is still there making sure you write well. :-)

I've never read The Deluxe Transitive Vampire. Is it good?

[hnybny.livejournal.com]

I tend to overuse commas myself, but I hate using short sentences.

[cjsmith.livejournal.com]

I probably overuse colons, semicolons, and parentheses. Sure, they're correct, but I could simplify. I suppose I perceive myself to be writing for an audience with a sophisticated reading comprehension level, so I don't bother simplifying. :-)

Grammar Goths

[psi-star-psi.livejournal.com]

I recall enjoying it more the first time (~15 years ago), but I read it in a shorter period then. I've been using it as emergency reading for about a year. I mainly read it on the elliptical machine at the gym; that may influence my opinion. It possesses a whacked sense of humor for the example sentences. Gothic imagery, fanciful beasts, and other oddities run about conjugating and phrasing. These are accompanied by sidebar illustrations to match random sentences. Discussion of the rat mafia with a picture of a rat packing a pistol bigger than himself is memorable.

Re: Grammar Goths

[cjsmith.livejournal.com]

I'd probably enjoy it. A whacked sense of humor goes a long way with me!

[dieppe.livejournal.com]

I... don't... know... what... you are... talking... about!

;) I use them sometimes myself, but in places where a comma would be nice, but the thought that follows doesn't really tie in extremely well with the first thought.

Or something.

[platypus]

I often write entries, then go back and remove most of the parentheses. It's generally an improvement. I do a lot of copyediting for other people, and I know when I'm writing in a non-standard way, but I often do it anyway in the name of conversational/informal writing. I just try not to let it go too far. I have a friend who uses... ellipses... at almost random points... in sentences... which drives... me... nuts.

I've never noticed any stylistic annoyances in your writing; I think anyone paying enough attention to think about whether they're overdoing it is probably keeping it under control.

[cjsmith.livejournal.com]

The case where a speaker would just let the words trail off, though, is exactly what it's for! "Um, didn't they... oh wait." I don't know if that usage is perfectly correct, but I know it doesn't bother me.

I also obviously don't mind ending sentences with a preposition. I know Latin couldn't do that. English can. Get over it. :-)

[plymouth.livejournal.com]

Commas indicate natural pauses in speaking... as this seems to be trying to do.

Those are indicating a DRAMATIC pause in speaking, as opposed to a brief one. You have to have some way to differentiate short vs long pauses. That are it.

[cjsmith.livejournal.com]

YES! I take out parentheses too! I use parentheses way too much. Perhaps it's reflective of the way I think: full of interconnections and side notes.

[cjsmith.livejournal.com]

*nod* If it were used occasionally, and if it were used where drama made sense in context, I might even still parse it that way. I've reached the point where my eyes skip over the remainder of a post once I see two or three of those.

ps: Oddly enough, I clicked over to your journal for a moment and I found ellipses! I honestly didn't remember them being there. Those did not trip my Oh Noes Someone Is Trying To Make This Sound Like Earth-Shattering Life-Threatening Delivery meter. Now I don't know why some do and some don't. This requires more ponderment.

[psi-star-psi.livejournal.com]

Just for conversation, how would you punctuate a transcript of William Shatner? Use ellipsis, dashes, or (meaningful pause)'s?

I suddenly occurs to me that the Closed Captioning typists must hate his shows. (Or love them because he provides breaks to catch up.)

[tiger-spot.livejournal.com]

I am a semi-colon fiend. I also have a nasty tendency to start sentences with conjunctions; this is merely a symptom of my greater tendency to explain everything by presenting a thought on one side of a debate, followed by a contradictory idea, followed by a situation in which the contradiction does not apply, followed by a disclaimer about why you should avoid those situations anyway, etc. This makes reading my writing quite similar to watching a tennis match, with all the back-and-forth-ing. It's a pain whether I do it within a sentence (as above) or on a larger scale.

Not to mention the hyphens, and the sentence fragments, and the parentheses....

[cjsmith.livejournal.com]

I would deliberately stray away from grammatical correctness just to preserve the annoyance of the original. In fact, I might mix and match styles. Ellipses between words might suffice for the first few scenes. Sentence fragments containing only one or two words each would up the ante for the next few scenes, followed perhaps by question marks after each word for a while. This could be fun.

[cjsmith.livejournal.com]

Definitely sentence fragments. All through my LiveJournal. I talk that way, too!

[nosrednayduj]

I will occasionally use ellipses in place of a smiley face, when the thing I've said is only marginally amusing. Or, if there's something funnier elsewhere. I try to limit myself to one smiley per message. In that case, though, the ellipses terminate the sentence.

I am also a semicolon (and colon) fiend. They put 'em on my keyboard: I'm gonna USE 'EM.

[cjsmith.livejournal.com]

I overuse smilies in a big way. A couple of years ago, a LiveJournal friend of mine decided to cut herself off cold turkey from any kind of emoticons. She said it was a lot more difficult than she'd expected. I haven't had the guts to try the same.

[juverna.livejournal.com]

You are adorable!

That said, I'm probably going to keep using all of these from time to time -- on LJ, in e-mail, and in IM, at least. It's one of my ways of lovingly saying goodbye to the perfectionist that I was in my youth. :)

[cjsmith.livejournal.com]

This is one area where my early perfectionism has not abated. I can leave laundry in the dryer and later zap it again for fifteen minutes to get the wrinkles out; I'll eat the too-crispy cookie or the lumpy bread; I am okay with the fact that my hair will never in my entire life look good; but grammar and spelling will probably push my buttons until the day I die. :-)

I wonder what makes a person this way. There are people who clearly are and people who clearly aren't, and I don't know why.

[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.

Re: Grammar Goths

[airporter.livejournal.com]

Oh, can I have that ISBN please?

As Allan will likely tell you (whence the topic arises,) I am hell on ellipses.

[airporter.livejournal.com]

I'm a bear about use of the ellipsis. After all, it's supposed to denote words that are missing from a statement. It's a pause, yes, but a very specific one: if you can't imagine another phrase or trailing words where that little trifecta of periods resides, it's not the right spot for the trifecta in the first place.

I'm a dasher myself. And of course, a bracer. I can't help it at all. I'm also occasionally guilty of the "my sentences are too short syndrome," at least when I'm short of time. Then again, when one of my personal peeves is hit at it's core, I tend to ramble.

Just ask allanh about the ellipse and I.