Why Most Writers Use Punctuation Poorly

The nuances of readability, meaning and tone

In previous articles I talked about the attitude a prose stylist should have and word selection. Here I’m hoping to touch on everybody’s least favourite topic: punctuation. I know many of you may think that punctuation is boring, but I’ll do my best to explain why it’s one of the most interesting aspects of writing.

I like to think of punctuation as the literary equivalent of dynamics and timing in music. These tools are available exclusively to us literary artists. In some sense, they are an essential part of what makes literature literary, for we do not speak in colons and commas.

I won’t be going into great detail about usage or anything here. To be honest, I’m sure I make many mistakes in this area according to the rules of proper usage (and I don’t care). Instead, I’ll be discussing the various purposes of punctuation, showing how small symbolic changes can have big effects on a sentence. My goal is simply to clarify this obscure area and perhaps stimulate some of you into thinking about it with more seriousness.

What is Punctuation?

There is a very simple answer to what punctuation is for the student, but for the literary writer things are much more complicated than that. Forget definitions. I want to begin by considering the three main functions that punctuation serves. There may be other, even subtler aspects to this, but in this article I will concern myself with (1) readability, (2) meaning, and (3) voice. After that I’ll say a bit about punctuating without punctuating and the open territory that lies before us.

1. Readability

The first goal of punctuation is to improve readability—or what I like to call ‘mental ergonomics.’ It’s been a long time, but I recall reading years ago that the original writings of the Greeks didn’t have punctuation. They just wrote in long unbroken lines the text just kept going and spilling over the page it was basically just a transcription from speech so there were no symbols to indicate pauses or grammatical structure everyone found it hard to read. This kind of writing takes a lot of effort to parse.

The addition of periods is useful in that it indicates a complete thought. It also lets the eye rest and tells the speaker to pause. You can actually go very far with only periods. I won’t go into the topic here. But if your phrasing is good you don’t need a lot of punctuation to help the reader. Words placed in an artful manner are easy to understand regardless of grammar.¹

But if you want to write a long sentence with many dependent clauses it can be difficult to show where one dependent clause ends and another begins. And if you try to avoid that by using only periods. The result is a kind of fractured prose. Which can be cool. Suppose you wanted to write a long list of objects. It’s difficult to read how the table was set with red cups. Blue plates and yellow napkins. Each of which a different geometric pattern arranged upon it. Interlocking squares. Circles. And triangles.

As you can see, we need something as the sentence structure becomes more complex. We need commas. First and foremost, these help us to parse the text and lighten the mental load required to understand it.

We are not yet talking about what these symbols mean, nor how they affect the rhythm. The first point to note about punctuation is that it exists to help us understand the text. There are all kinds of grammatical rules about independent clauses and how these ought to be strung together, but the foundation is readability.

You can go quite far with just commas and periods, but punctuation is not just about parsing out clauses and clarifying the text. It also encodes information and is a source of meaning.

2. Meaning

The next way punctuation is used is to encode additional meaning into the text. The more complicated your thoughts are, the more tools you will need to adequately render the intended meaning accurately. Is it possible to just let the words do the talking. Do we really need all these extra symbols. It seems to me that we do, and two very obvious examples here are the question mark (as you just saw) and the exclamation mark. These add additional information that is not present in the words themselves, and they enrich the kinds of thoughts we can express.

At this point everything gets very complicated because the nature of what a thought is in writing differs from writer to writer. Everyone knows that a simple sentence (an independent clause) has a subject and a predicate. It’s self-contained and needs nothing else to be understood. But writers—especially writers with literary pretensions—would do well to think about what their sentences mean to them. What is a thought? What is an act of perception? What do my sentences refer to, if they refer to anything?

When I’m writing on Substack I tend to play things pretty fast and loose, but these are serious questions from an artistic perspective. Consider the following variations:

1. The wind blew through the trees. It blew through the empty streets.

2. The wind blew through the trees, through the empty streets.

3. The wind blew through the trees and empty streets.

4. The wind blew through the trees; it blew through the empty streets.

Now what is a thought here? Two things are being described, but each of these sentences uses a different approach to punctuation, which in turn changes the grammatical structure of the sentence. Is 1 two thoughts and 3 merely one thought? How different is 3 from 4? I will not go into great detail because this is a different topic, but there are many interesting things to ponder here.

If you wanted to simply describe the events in a cinematic style such that each sentence is something like a picture, then 1 seems best. If you wanted a more lyrical phrasing that seemed to flow like the wind itself, then 2 would be a good choice. If you wanted simplicity and brevity, use 3. And what are we to make of 4?

One of the reasons why the semi-colon has fallen out of use is because it is not necessary from a readability standpoint. The semi-colon (usually) connects two independent clauses, uniting them into a single sentence. This connection is more about the meaning, though some people also do it for tone and rhythm. The semi-colon indicates that these two ostensibly independent thoughts are actually one thought. It is difficult to use precisely because the salient feature here is not a technical matter but something deeper. Any simple sentence could be joined with any other simple sentence; that’s not an issue from a grammatical standpoint; but the semi-colon—perhaps more-so² than any other punctuation mark—indicates a connection of some kind; and just stringing together independent clauses can be annoying; if there isn’t some deeper reason underlying the choice.

I won’t spend time pontificating about parentheses, the colon and the em dash. But the key thing is that these too encode meaning into the text. Each person can have their own particular way of using these symbols. What’s important is that they know why they are using them. Sometimes I think it’s good to be creative, too.

Although not the “correct” way to punctuate, I have long thought that large if-then sentences should have a semi-colon at the critical juncture instead of a comma. It seems to me that this is where the sentence pivots and something more weighty is needed to indicate the shift, even though the first part is a dependent clause. I’m sure you will find your own examples of similar things.

3. Voice

The final aspect of punctuation is voice, which I will define as tone and rhythm. Sometimes people—and even very good writers—use voice to mean style, but I have defined style elsewhere as the personality of a piece of prose. When I use the term 'voice,’ I’m referring to two aspects of writing: rhythm and tone, both of which are heavily influenced by punctuation.

This is the subtlest and most difficult aspect of punctuation in my opinion. Everyone reads in a different way, so I don’t think there can be any standards here. Even so, here is a good rule of thumb that I use:

• Exclamation mark (!) and ellipsis (…) — full rest

• period (.) and question mark (?) — half rest

• colon (:), semi-colon (;) — quarter rest

• comma (,) and parenthesis () — eighth rest

• em dash (—) — can be either quarter or eighth depending on the situation.

I haven’t seen a table like this anywhere, but this is how I read. People can have their own understanding of how rests should apply, and you can kind of tell how a writer is using these marks if he is good.

This introduces the crucial concept of space into punctuation. In some sense this was already presupposed in the section on readability, but the concept now takes on much more importance. There is a saying in music: it’s not about the notes but the space between them. The idea is that emptiness, time, is just as much a vehicle for meaning and beauty as language itself. Sometimes you should use punctuation for non-grammatical reasons to change the rhythm, which can then affect meaning and readability. Although I’m talking about all these things separately, they all work together to form the unity that is one’s style.

These rhythmic changes also have an effect on the overall tone of the text. Again, this is related to meaning but I don’t think it is quite the same thing. The clearest example of this is the em dash, which to my ear indicates a pretty substantial change in tone. Consider the differences in these five sentences:

1. If John goes to the store, assuming he hasn’t forgotten his wallet, which he often does, he will buy bananas, apples and milk.

2. If John goes to the store, assuming he hasn’t forgotten his wallet, which he often does; he will buy bananas, apples and milk.³

3. If John goes to the store—assuming he hasn't forgotten his wallet, which he often does—he will buy bananas, apples and milk.

4. If John goes to the store (assuming he hasn’t forgotten his wallet, which he often does) he will buy bananas, apples and milk.

5. If John goes to the store—assuming he hasn’t forgotten his wallet (which he often does)—he will buy bananas, apples and milk.

These all have different tonal and rhythmic properties despite being more or less the same in terms of meaning. Taken as unities, they also have different tones. I don’t want to make this article too long, but tone is something like the way a sentence is read, its pitch or timbre. It’s difficult to explain this in a systematic way, but I think you should be able to see how the examples above also differ in this respect.

To my ear, (2) seems more mentally present than (1), as if the person were a speaking with the structure of their thoughts in mind. (3) goes up in pitch and (4) goes down. Finally, (5) seems much more cluttered and neurotic. I don’t think one of these is right and the others are wrong. They each have their own characteristics, and your job as a writer is to figure out how well the punctuation you use accurately conveys your thoughts, images and ideas.

Subtle Uses of Punctuation

Capitalization, Italics and hyphenated words

Now that we have a clear picture about what punctuation is and what it’s used for I’d like to briefly touch on a few more subtle ideas, like the use of punctuation applied to individual words. I don’t even know if it’s technically correct to refer to these things as punctuation. But who cares? It’s all related. I’ll try to be brief here.

Capital letters stand out more and help indicate a new sentence (along with the period). They tend to mean that a new thought has started and indicate a complete unit.

In poetry it was standard to capitalize every word that began a new line; today this is much less common. One reason to keep the capital letter at the beginning of each line is if the poet thinks of the line as the primary unit of his poems rather than the sentence. This is common in people like Wallace Stevens, but many poets today do not emphasize individual lines as much.

In prose, certain people like to drop capital letters because they’re patriarchal/colonial and dominate all the smaller letters. A lack of capital letters also resulted from people writing on typewriters who had no time to edit, and their absence can have a rough, rebellious feel.

The use of italics is a very interesting and difficult topic as well. It is used for emphasis—and in recent years ALL CAPS and bold type have served as its replacement due to texting habits and the internet. There are conventions like using it for books, but it’s also a way to add a heavy stress. Some people find that using italics this way makes a text less readable or more annoying somehow, but I think it’s a matter of taste.

There are also quotation marks, both single and double. These can be used to emphasize things as well, but they often have an ironic tone. I am still trying to figure out when to use the single and when to use the double. I know the rules, but I sometimes wonder what is more pleasing to the eye? What is more natural? What captures my intention best? We have the single one (‘), the double (“) as well as the lighter, symmetrical versions of these ('), ("). How much weight should I add to the words being quoted? These might seem like ridiculous things to worry about, but I’m just giving you guys my (still unfinished) thoughts on this issue.

Hyphenated words are kind of in that no-man’s-land between word selection and punctuation. There are rules for this kind of thing, but I think hyphenated words are both underused because they offer many creative possibilities that are standardly presented as two words and overused because we should be coining more neologisms.

There are many words that I intuitively hyphenate because they sound smashed together in my head, and I may play around with this more in the future.⁴ There seems to be a linguistic process by which two words slowly merge into a single one—but this is a topic for another time.⁵ These are not trivial distinctions, for the use of space here matters in terms of both meaning and tone.

Words and Spaces as Punctuation

Here is another idea that I haven’t seen mentioned anywhere else: that words might be used as punctuation. In some sense this is obvious and you’ll find instances of this kind of thing in all your favourite writers, but it’s seldom made explicit. If we consider the fact that punctuation is there to help us manipulate readability, meaning and rhythm/tone; then the question must be raised: do we always need symbols to do this? In other words: is it possible to use language itself to accomplish (at least some) of these goals?

The answer here should be pretty obvious and it introduces another layer of complexity into how you punctuate your writing. It’s standard practice to yoke two independent clauses together with a comma and a conjunction (and, but, yet, so, …), but it’s worth considering the implications of this. It seems to me that conjunctions, empty space and sometimes even adverbs can function in place of punctuation; and the reverse is true as well. Consider the following:

1. Sally drove home during a blizzard, took a corner too fast, slid off the road and crashed.

2. Sally drove home during a blizzard and took a corner too fast and slid off the road and crashed.

3. Sally drove home during a blizzard: took a corner too fast, slid off the road—and crashed.

4. Because Sally drove home during a blizzard and took a corner too fast, she slid off the road and crashed.

5. Sally drove home, slid off the road and crashed (blizzard, speed, corner).⁶

As you can see, the same units are here, but they are transfigured according to the different kinds of punctuation and connecting words. One of my favourites here is to substitute the word “because” with a colon, but there are endless ways of turning sentences around. My hope is that this essay just gets you to start thinking a bit more rigorously about these things. Which brings me to…

The Vocabulary of Punctuation

Once you understand that the primary purpose of punctuation is to improve readability, meaning and voice, a lot of options open up. Many people think about vocabulary—and I have written a whole article about word selection—but there is also such a thing as one’s “stigmary.” Literary writers would be wise to consciously choose what marks they are going to use and decide how they are going to use them.

Of course, when writing blog articles you can just let it rip (as I do) or follow the “correct way” that was handed down to us. But for more sustained literary projects, whether they be short stories, novels or even literary essays, it makes sense to think about how the choice of punctuation contributes to the overall effect.

Many people talk about Cormac McCarthy’s sparse use of punctuation. His books are examples of a very light style of punctuating. There are no quotation marks, no semi-colons, no em dashes, no parentheticals, no contractions, lots of neologisms, etc… This gives his work, even just on a purely visual level, a certain elegance. And in some passages of Blood Meridian, it seems like the words have existed since time immemorial.

But playing with such limited tools has its drawbacks as well. There are things he can’t do, phrases he can’t play. A heavy punctuation style is one that employs a lot of different marks. This is great for changing the tone and depicting the interior lives of people, especially neurotics. I think David Foster Wallace is often pretty heavy.

We could also speak of loud and quiet punctuation styles. Someone who uses a lot of all caps to EMPHASIZE their ideas is going to sound much louder than someone who uses italics to merely draw attention to a certain word. And this is a big difference! I almost never use exclamation marks because they feel too loud, too youthful, too immature. Short sentences are youthful and loud. Long, winding sentences with a lot of subordinate clauses sound quieter and older.

The key point here is this: It’s not just the words you write; it’s how you write them.

There are no hard and fast rules here, and I will say more about this in a future article on phrasing.

Expanding Punctuation

The final thing to touch on is the possibility of new methods of punctuation. We have inherited a great tradition, and the toolbox of English prose is large. But as with English writing as a whole, I think we have been suffering from some sterility in this area for the past few decades. Most of the rules that are taught in college are grounded in clarity and simplicity, making them the natural correlate to pentatonic prose. I’m not suggesting that everyone start typing with emojis—I would hate this—but I think punctuation is an area that hasn’t really been developed.

Not only can we use the punctuation marks we have in unique ways, but there is even the possibility of employing the underused symbols we presently possess. I have long thought that it would be fun to import foreign punctuation marks as we import foreign words, or to expand our symbolic vocabulary with “neoglyphs”. There are a few cool ones out there already:

• The Spanish inverted question mark and exclamation (¿ ¡) placed at the opening of a sentence.

• The ampersand, which seems lighter to me than the word “and” (&)

• The slash/solidus, which seems lighter and different than “or” (/)

• The French guillemets (« »)

• The Greek semicolon (·)

• The irony mark (⸮)

I sometimes wonder if there are expressive possibilities that we simply don’t use because we lack the means with which to do so. Perhaps it would be cool for a sci-fi writer to develop his own syntax for a story set on some distant world. Things like this would need to be handled with a great deal of care, because the more you push the limits on things like this, the more demand it places on the reader. But I think there is a lot of room for growth here. The important thing, it seems to me, is to be intentional with your choices. Although it may be good to learn the rules before you break them, it’s even better to investigate those deeper laws that the rules are trying to objectify in propositional terms.

I suppose I should answer the question that is the title of this article. Why do writers use punctuation poorly? Because they don’t think deeply about what they are doing and why. Most incompetence is simply the result of not paying attention. Everyone seems to be feeling the pressure of the brittle rules that hem us in, but few have the wherewithal to do much more than complain. The world of literature is big, and I think we would all do well to expand our horizons ⦿

1. I often think that a story set in winter could use this kind of minimalism to great effect.

2. This is a good example where I should write “more so” but my inner ear and mind want the hyphen in there.

3. The Krug semi-colon. Does anyone else do this? Please let me know in the comments. I have seen it in older English writers (Locke, I think?), but it doesn’t seem so intentional there.

4. This is an area in my own writing where I make many, many mistakes.

5. In my novel Pornoland I employed the term “pseudomystic” instead of “pseudo-mystic” because the former had a more flowy rhythm and, when I thought about it, the term had a meaning that was more than the sum of its parts, “pseudo-” and “mystic.”

6. This is the Nabokov special.