[stylist] Exclamation points

Wed May 1 00:53:47 UTC 2013

Bridgit,
Saramago offends me without regard to his non-use of punctuation, though
I'm pleased to hear that about him, as it allows me to think even less of
him than I already do. If he had used any other minority group as a metaphor
(I'm referring here to his novel Blindness), there would have been riots,
and I suspect he would have had a worse time than Salman Rushty. But, since
he chose to use blindness, he gets a Nobel Prize.

It's funny how tastes differ. I wasn't fully sighted, but did read print as
a kid, and I have a visual memory of the ellipsis, which I find to be an
unobtrusive and attractive mark. You had full vision and remember it as
something quite the opposite. This is probably why the experts can't agree
on anything. They are trying too hard to make rules to govern what the
reader should like. Another example of something they tell young writers is
to show not tell. Yet, if you read Joseph Heller's Catch 22 or anything by
John Grisham, and lots of stuff in between, there is a lot of telling.

Well, as they say, that's why they make chocolate and vanilla.
Donna 

-----Original Message-----
From: stylist [mailto:stylist-bounces at nfbnet.org] On Behalf Of Bridgit
Pollpeter
Sent: Tuesday, April 30, 2013 4:47 PM
To: stylist at nfbnet.org
Subject: [stylist] Exclamation points

Donna,

Like the all caps, bolding and italics are to be used very sparingly too, at
least according to the school of thought I was trained in. I'm not saying I
agree or even follow exactly the way I was taught as I believe much of this
is a matter of preference opposed to a matter of right or wrong. That being
said though, I do like to try to experiment and play with format and
structure, but all things in moderation.

To be quite honest, nowadays the rules are meant to be broken, grin.
Hose Seramago is notorious for not using punctuation. He doesn't use
quotations for dialogue or separate paragraphs or use commas, and he's a
freaking Nobel literature prize winner. The couple of books I had to read by
him, I found distracting because of his non-use of punctuation.
He also focuses on plot as opposed to characters, which is another big no-no
they say these days, yet some people get away with it, as case-in-point with
this example.

Cormac McCarthy is another current author who plays with format and
structure. His book The Road is one long narrative with no para breaks.
I actually like how he does this. It's a visual representation of the plot
of the book, and in this case, I think it works.

Jamaica Kincaid played with format and structure. She has a short story that
like McCarthy has no para breaks.

The ellipsis was another punctuation we were told to not use. The same
instructor I've already mentioned absolutely despised ellipsis's and would
lecture you for using them. If you used it more than once in a piece, she
flipped out, grin. I'm not against the use of the ellipsis's, but I do think
it should be used sparingly. Visually, I think it's a bit distracting.

Literary fiction and popular fiction seem to juxtapose one another most the
time. What most deem *bad writing,* often is what sells the best to the
public. You can't really say something is right or wrong these days because
even the so-called experts can't seem to agree.

My program at university was in the fine arts department and revolved around
the workshop. For electives, I had to take English classes, and the writing
classes I took in the English department were so greatly different from my
classes in my major over in the FA department. The way in which they
workshopped , taught, the school of thought, it was so vastly different in
many ways.

So at the end of the day, do whatever the hell you want, smile.

Bridgit
Message: 29
Date: Tue, 30 Apr 2013 12:28:54 -0400
From: "Donna Hill" <penatwork at epix.net>
To: "'Writer's Division Mailing List'" <stylist at nfbnet.org>
Subject: Re: [stylist] Exclamation points
Message-ID: <7C59B7A0C0DA4DDB87688909E192D51F at OwnerHP>
Content-Type: text/plain;	charset="us-ascii"

Bridgit,
Thanks for the explanation. It sounds like your professor was into
experimentation and using new ways of visually implicating emphasis ...
I
hope, in addition to and not totally in place of the occasional and
time-honored exclamation point. In terms of using the dash to connote a
slight passage of time, I prefer the ellipses, but I think every writer must
come to some understanding of all of this as a matter of personal style.
I
believe it was Gertrude Stein who was famous for not using commas.
Personally, I don't want to go there. 

I still don't like all caps. The only time I can personally justify that
approach is when the word is itself a sound that happens outside of the
narrative. I think Rowling does this with "BAM." I've never used it,
however, in all of my years of writing.

In your earlier post, you also mentioned italics and boldface, both of which
I believe should be used with the utmost of caution and never for creating
the sense of emphasis. In my novel, I use italics twice, and in both cases
it is for the title of a book mentioned in the text. Were I to then use it
to connote emphasis, its rule in setting off titles would be compromised.
Likewise, 

boldface is used in my book only for chapter titles. If the concept of
having the technique be unintrusive or unobtrusive is at all a part of the
discussion, I am baffled at the use of boldface. In PR writing boldface is
used specifically to distract the reader from reading from the top and to
place prominent points of interest in the reader's mind. Though I often
think Madison Avenue is misinformed about the value and effect of
advertising and different techniques, they do still do this in print. I am
assuming they think it really does work. If it does, then that impact must
be considered when deciding whether or not to use it in other types of
writing.

I also think that dismissing something out of hand because of exclamation
points is a bit much, but forewarned is forearmed, and I won't send you
anything with a point for Slate and Style. *grin* Donna

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