Punctuation Problems: Proper Parentheses, Part Two

On Punctuation With Parentheses

Parenthetical statements come in two varieties: small statements within a sentence, or longer statements of one or more sentences.

When inserting a parenthetical statement into a sentence, don’t move any of the sentence’s punctuation into the parentheses or adjust the grammar of the sentence to account for the text in the parentheses. You should be able to completely remove the parenthetical statement from the sentence and still have all grammar and punctuation flow correctly:

     Original: While I was speaking with Ludwig, I was also texting my wife.

     Wrong: While I was speaking with Ludwig (my step-father,) I was also texting my wife.

     Right: While I was speaking with Ludwig (my step-father), I was also texting my wife.

     Original: I don’t dislike Ludwig, but I don’t really enjoy his company, either.

     Wrong: I don’t dislike Ludwig (or his children,) but I don’t really enjoy their company, either.

     Right: I don’t dislike Ludwig (or his children), but I don’t really enjoy his company, either.

As a good rule of thumb, if the parenthetical is within a sentence, two things should be true: first, you should not begin the parenthetical with a capital unless it is a word that is normally capitalized (like a name); second, you should never have any punctuation at the end of the statement inside the parentheses. The only exception for this is if the statement is a question or an exclamation, in which case you can end it with a question mark or exclamation point, respectively. Note, however, that the question mark or exclamation point will not end the sentence.

     Wrong: Ludwig is really smart (He is a physicist.) and kind of socially awkward.

     Right: Ludwig is really smart (he is a physicist) and kind of socially awkward.

     Wrong: I don’t really get Ludwig (and probably never will;) he doesn’t really get me either.

     Right: I don’t really get Ludwig (and probably never will); he doesn’t really get me, either.

    

     Right: The other day, Ludwig wore lederhosen (seriously  . . . lederhosen?) to my baseball game.

     Original: But he bought me ice cream afterward, which was nice.

     Wrong: But he bought me ice cream afterward (my favorite!) Which was nice.

     Right: But he bought me ice cream afterward (my favorite!), which was nice.

If, on the other hand, your parenthetical statement is a sentence or more, then simply insert the entire thing into your paragraph as you would any other sentence, only with parentheses around it:

     My mom and Ludwig are planning a big vacation to Germany this summer, so that he can show us where he grew up. I’m not sure I want to go. (I’d have to skip out on band camp. I’m a section leader this year, so that seems like it would be irresponsible.) But my mom really wants me to come.

Note that, as always, the entire parenthetical statement could be removed from the paragraph without a problem:

     My mom and Ludwig are planning a big vacation to Germany this summer, so that he can show us where he grew up. I’m not sure I want to go. But my mom really wants me to come.

This is why you should make sure that none of the information outside the parentheses refers directly to any of the information inside the parentheses—otherwise, the parenthetical wouldn’t be able to be removed without affecting the flow of information.

     My mom and Ludwig are planning a big vacation to Germany this summer, so that he can show us where he grew up. I’m not sure I want to go. (I’d have to skip out on band camp. I’m a section leader this year, so that seems like it would be irresponsible.) But my mom really wants me to come, so I may need to get permission from my Band Director.

Without the parentheses, that paragraph wouldn’t make sense:

     My mom and Ludwig are planning a big vacation to Germany this summer, so that he can show us where he grew up. I’m not sure I want to go. But my mom really wants me to come, so I may need to get permission from my Band Director.

In such cases, you’re best off moving more information into the parentheses or getting rid of the parentheses altogether.

     My mom and Ludwig are planning a big vacation to Germany this summer, so that he can show us where he grew up. I’m not sure I want to go, but my mom really wants me to come. (I’d have to skip out on band camp. I’m a section leader this year, so that seems like it would be irresponsible. I may need to get permission from my Band Director.)

     My mom and Ludwig are planning a big vacation to Germany this summer, so that he can show us where he grew up. I’m not sure I want to go. (I’d have to skip out on band camp. I’m a section leader this year, so that seems like it would be irresponsible.) But my mom really wants me to come (so I may need to get permission from my Band Director).

     My mom and Ludwig are planning a big vacation to Germany this summer, so that he can show us where he grew up. I’m not sure I want to go, since I’d have to skip out on band camp. I’m a section leader this year—skipping seems like it would be irresponsible. But my mom really wants me to come, so I may need to get permission from my Band Director.

Punctuation Problems: Breaks

There is a set of punctuation marks that are used to separate thoughts in writing, which I like to refer to as Breaking Punctuation. They are the comma ( , ), the em dash ( — ), the semicolon ( ; ), the colon ( : ), parentheses ( ), and the period ( . ). Each of these has a subtly different meaning from the others, which we’re going to break down here.

The Period

The period is the ultimate and strongest form of breaking punctuation, which is why it’s known as a “full stop” in the UK. It is placed at the end of the sentence to indicate an end to that statement and a transition to a new one.

The Comma

Buttersafe.com, everyone.

The comma is used to provide a bridge between very closely related statements or between sequences of incomplete statements. You’ve probably noticed that proper comma usage can be very tricky to master, and you’re not alone in that experience. We’ve covered some of the depths and complexities of comma usage in several posts, but for now what you need to know is this: the comma connects closely related thoughts, and the period separates finished, more-or-less unrelated thoughts.

The Semicolon

The other forms of breaking punctuation fall on a spectrum between the comma and the period. The semicolon is halfway between the two; it generally separates statements that could be broken into individual sentences, but which the author wants to be connected in the mind of the reader. Use it sparingly—it tends to create sentences that are very long and difficult to follow.

The Colon

The colon serves the specific purpose of introducing information; it can only be used if the text preceding it says something along the lines of, “I am going to tell you this.” So, for instance:

     Gary picked up all of the items on the list: a pickaxe, a jump rope, and—for some reason—a huge container of lard.
     This is what I was sent to tell you: that you must put an end to your company’s project, or your world will be destroyed.
     You have chosen the greatest hamburger of all: the Beefinator.

Remember: the colon should only be used if the text before it is somehow introducing the text that comes after it.

The Em Dash

The em dash is the jack of all trades. It swings back and forth between the comma and the semicolon and the colon. It can be used in place of a comma to provide a little more emphasis to the pause between related information, or in place of a semicolon to provide a little more connection between statements. It can also serve as a sort of weak colon, separating an initial statement from another that provides more connected or explanatory information. Often, I’ll simply use it to create variety when I’ve already used several commas or semicolons. But be careful about using it too much—the em dash is wide and easily noticeable, and a cluster of them in the same area of the page will tend to stand out garishly.



In summation, the comma is weakest form of breaking punctuation, used to separate closely related information; the semicolon separates weakly related or unrelated statements; the colon separates introductory text from the information it’s introducing; the em dash can serve as a strong comma, a weak colon, or a weak semicolon; and the period is the full stop that means that the previous statement is complete and we are moving on to something else.



P.S.
It may seem like there is considerable overlap between the uses for these breaking punctuation marks—that’s because there is. Often, you’ll be able to use either a period or a semicolon; in other cases, either a colon or a semicolon or an em dash would work. What punctuation you choose should depend on how connected you want the information it breaks apart to be, on how much you’ve already used each form of breaking punctuation, and on how you want the sentence or sentences to flow.  That is the reason for this post—to let you know how the breaking punctuation can be used, so that you know what your options are when you have more than one.

P.P.S.
If you want some helpful homework, go back over this post again and pay particular attention to the breaking punctuation. You’ll notice that I’ve used each form of breaking punctuation at some point, and in just about every way they can be used. Find each point where I’ve used a breaking punctuation mark, and make sure you understand why I chose that particular mark at that point in the text. Good luck!

Punctuating Dialog: Here's How It's Done

I’ve read quite a few manuscripts of late that had trouble punctuating their dialog correctly, so let’s go over that very quickly.

1. You should always have some sort of punctuation immediately before your closing quotation mark.

It can be a comma, a period, a semi-colon, question mark, exclamation point, em-dash, or ellipses; it can be almost any form of punctuation, but there must be punctuation of some sort. What you don’t want to do is this:

     “I haven’t seen Aziz since class yesterday” Nora said.

There should be some sort of punctuation between yesterday and the closing quotation mark (a comma, in this case), and in all similar scenarios. There is almost no situation in which you’d be justified leaving out that closing punctuation.

2. If the dialog is followed by a dialog tag, then you cannot close the dialog with a period.

The dialog tag is that short little bit that identifies who is speaking: some variation of she said, he asked, I shouted, etc. If there is a dialog tag after your dialog, you cannot end the dialog with a period:

     INCORRECT: “I haven’t seen Aziz since class yesterday.” Nora said.

     CORRECT: “I haven’t seen Aziz since class yesterday,” Nora said.

Note that this rule only applies to periods. Other ending punctuation such as question marks and exclamation points should not be affected by the dialog tag:

     “I think Aziz has been kidnapped!” she shouted.

     “What makes you think that?” he replied.

Note also that exclamation points and question marks in dialog do not end the sentence, so the dialog tag is not capitalized—as discussed in this post.

3. If dialog is interrupted, end it with an em dash. If it trails off, use ellipses.

     “We don’t have any reason to think—” he began.

     “I just know something is wrong!” she interrupted. “He could be hurt, or . . .”

Ellipses in dialog is a subject more thoroughly covered in this post.

4. If the dialog tag interrupts a sentence, then it should end with a comma. If it comes at the end of a sentence of dialog, it should end with a period, even if it is followed by more dialog.

     “Nora,” Aziz whispered, “please come after me.”

     “I’m calling the police,” Nora said. “I don’t care what you say.”

You’ll find more on this topic in this post.

If you're wondering, Aziz was totally kidnapped, but Nora saved him in time.

Punctuation Problems: Hyphens and Compound Modifiers

One of the most common uses for the hyphen (-) is to connect compound modifiers. A compound modifier is a mix of two or more adjectives or adverbs that jointly modify the same word. So, for example:

     He is such a well-behaved boy.

The words well and behaved work in tandem to modify boy. Well clarifies the meaning of behaved, and together they carry a new descriptive meaning. They are acting together as though they were a single adjective. Here are some other examples:

     “You think she committed the murder? She’s a ninety-seven-year-old woman, for heaven’s sake!”

     “My hospital takes a very patient-centered approach to healthcare.”

     “The creature had a 50-foot wingspan!”

Note that in compound modifiers that involve numbers, a hyphen is required whether you spell out the number or use numerals (so the last example could also be fifty-foot; but a hyphen is needed either way).

Part of the reason for this rule is to avoid potentially confusing situations. For example:

     “We met an American football player in the pub last night.”

Did the speakers meet someone who plays American football, or did they meet a football player who is also American? A hyphen can add clarification:

     “We met an American-football player in the pub last night.”

The hyphen lets us know that those two descriptors belong together; thus, the answer is that the speakers met someone who plays American football.

"Man eating plant" vs. "Man-eating plant."

Remember that you only hyphenate words that are working together as a single adjective. So the following usage would be incorrect:

     “This might be the most well-thought-out-and-over-detailed plan I’ve ever seen.”

Well-thought-out and over-detailed are two separate descriptions, so the example should instead read:

     “This might be the most well-thought-out and over-detailed plan I’ve ever seen.”

Exceptions:

Sadly, it can’t just be that simple. There are a few exceptions to the hyphenating-compound-modifiers rule.

First exception: If the first word in the compound modifier is an adverb that ends in -ly, it is extremely unusual to hyphenate the two words together.

     He is such a poorly behaved boy.

     Part of the reason for this rule is to avoid potentially confusing situations.

Second exception: This rule only applies to compound modifiers that appear before the word they modify. If they appear after, they should not be hyphenated. Here’s what some of our earlier examples would look like if the compound modifiers had appeared after the word they modified:

     “That boy is so well behaved.”

     “You think she committed the murder? That woman is ninety seven years old, for heaven’s sake!”

     “My hospital’s approach to healthcare is very patient centered.”

     “The creature had a wingspan of 50 feet!”

Punctuation Problems: "While" and the Comma

A few months ago we discussed how a single comma can change the meaning of a sentence. But commas are more versatile than that; they can also change the meaning of specific words, simply by being placed nearby. For instance, the word while:

     We’ll go to the theatre while you watch the baby.

     I am a doctor of medicine, while you are simply a quack.

See that? In the first example, while meant “during the time that” and was not preceded by a comma. In the second example, it meant “whereas” and was preceded by a comma.

Now, it’s technically not the comma that changes the meaning of while. But that comma will pretty much always follow this pattern. If you’re using while to mean whereas, then it should be preceded by the comma; if you’re using it to mark a period of time, then there shouldn’t be a comma.

What I’m saying here is that editors don’t want to see this:

     He’s throwing a party, while his parents are out of town.

This happens all over the place, and it is incorrect. Resist the impulse to place a comma before a while that’s supposed to indicate a duration of time. Just don’t do it.

The problem with this error is that it still creates a grammatically valid sentence. A normal grammatical error just says something poorly, but at least it’s usually still what the writer meant to say. This error, on the other hand, completely changed the meaning of the sentence from this:

     He’s throwing a party during the period of time that his parents are out of town.

To this:

     He’s throwing a party; his parents, on the other hand, are out of town.

See the problem here? If you’re a writer, someone who makes a living (or wants to make a living) purely by the words you string together, then you need to know how to make those words say exactly what you intend them to. So remember:

Note: When while is being used to indicate a period of time, it is usually possible to switch the order of the sentence’s clauses like this:

     While his parents are out of town, he’s throwing a party.

In this case, you will need a comma between the two parts of the sentence, but not beside while.

What Editors Are Looking For

As I briefly mentioned in my last post, I spent several days last week at the 2015 Superstars Writing Seminar:

Pictured: Famous authors and editors. Not pictured: me (off-panel to the left). Photo by the awesome Lauren Lang.

It was an excellent experience which I highly recommend to any writer with a desire to learn about the business of publishing and how to make a career out of writing. Even if you’ve already got a lot of knowledge in the area, this seminar gives you a nigh-unparalleled opportunity to meet authors and editors and pick their brains for information.

I took some notes at one particular panel that I would like to share with you. The panel was titled What Are Editors After and the presenters were all full-time editors or authors who have regularly edited anthologies or the like: Toni Weisskopf, Lisa Mangum, Eric Flint, Kevin J. Anderson, and David Farland. They mentioned several things that can crop up on the first page of a story that cause them to quickly set the submission aside. Here they are in the order of how frequently they were mentioned:

Repeated grammar and spelling errors

Now, all of these editors understand that typos happen; no one can edit a story to absolute perfection. But they unanimously agreed that a story with several typos or grammatical mistakes on the very first page wouldn’t be worth their time. Learn the grammar, edit carefully, and ask for help. Find yourself a freelance editor to go over your work if you feel you need it. Make sure that your story is as clear of error as it can be. Remember the Editor's Lake.

Poor formatting

For most of these editors, this wasn’t as big a deal as it was before the age of electronic submissions. Nowadays, if you used a font that they don’t like, they can simply hit “select all” and change it. But if you have a lot of formatting mistakes (strange margins, strange fonts, fonts that are too small or too large, etc.), they won’t bother making the changes; they’ll just set the story aside. If you’re not sure what a properly-formatted manuscript looks like, don’t worry—we’ll be going over that next time.

Remember: most of these editors don’t have very strict formatting requirements. Some other editors do. Always check a publication or editor’s submission guidelines to see if they have specific formatting requirements and then follow those directions exactly. No editor wants to work with someone who can’t follow simple directions.

The same topic that everyone else is writing about

Editors receive dozens to hundreds of submissions on a regular basis, and stories tend to come in waves—after Twilight became popular, there were a lot of vampire stories getting submitted all over, either from people who were inspired by the books or who felt that the world needed to see vampires done “properly.”  When scientists successfully cloned Dolly the sheep, a whole slew of cloning stories poured into submission piles around the nation. Tomorrow there will probably be another major news story that will inspire dozens or hundreds of similar stories. Since most editors have a very limited amount of time to go through the mountains of submissions they receive, these waves of similar stories all tend to blend together into one uniform, uninteresting blob.

This is a tricky problem to avoid. After all, how are you supposed to know what everyone else is writing about? The answer is really that you simply have to make your best educated guess. Don’t try to “write to the market” (meaning don’t deliberately write what “seems popular” right now). If you see an interesting news story or new scientific discovery and it spawns an idea for a story, then go ahead and start writing that story—but do your best to take that story several steps away from where it started. Throw away the first few characters and setting that come to mind and reach for something more unusual. Do the same with plot twists and endings. If you can, take your story so far afield that no one would ever be able to identify where it actually began. And don’t wait until halfway through the story to make your story different—if you don’t do it right from the start, the editor probably won’t get that far.

For a few more great tips on what not to do at the beginning of your submission, check out Ten Easy Ways To Get Rejected by David Farland (and don’t forget to avoid metaphors).

Punctuation Problems: Unfinished or Interrupted Dialog

When a person is speaking and doesn’t finish their thought, it happens in one of two ways. Either they trail off gradually, drawing out the last word and dropping in volume, or they cut off abruptly in mid-sentence or even mid-word.

Trailing off can indicate that the person has become lost in thought (and possibly forgotten to finish their sentence), that they have become distracted by something they see or hear, or that they are trying to suggest the unspoken final words without actually saying them. Whichever the circumstance, trailing off will always be indicated by ellipses at the end of the sentence:

     “Well, the experiment might work if we switched out the copper conductors . . .”

     “What in the world is going on . . .”

     “We do know someone who takes care of these sort of problems . . .”

Most writers use ellipses properly to indicate trailed-off dialog. However, I also often see them used to indicate speech that has cut off abruptly or been interrupted, which is incorrect. In those cases, the em dash is the appropriate punctuation:

     “I’ve figured it out!” Javid shouted. “The murderer is—”

     A gunshot cracked through the night, and Javid suddenly collapsed.

     “I am speaking,” Bernadette said, “even though I don’t—”

     “I am interrupting you, madam!”  Gabriel interrupted, “because I love the sound of my own—”

     “Well I shall simply interrupt you back, sir! For I must—”

     “Fool! My capacity for interrupting others far exceeds your own.”

Remember: ellipses indicate trailed-off dialog, and the em dash indicates abruptly cut-off dialog. No exceptions.

It's unfinished and incomplete, see?

Look, some elements of grammar and punctuation just don't lend themselves to perfect visual metaphors, all right? Trying to find a good picture for this post was hard. Thanks for reading, just move on now.

Formatting for Publishing: Find and Replace

A subtle way to polish up your finished manuscript before sending it to a publisher is to do a few quick “find and replace” runs.  There are a lot of little formatting errors that crop up in a manuscript while you’re working—some are simple mis-types, some are the result of editing, and others can be the consequence of opening a document in multiple programs (Microsoft Word and Google Docs, for instance). Most of them can be easily fixed en masse.

Open the “Find and Replace” window by hitting Ctrl+H in Microsoft Word or Google Docs (command+shift+f and command+shift+h in their respective Mac versions). If you’ve never used “find and replace” before, it’s simple—whatever combination of characters you type in the first text box will be replaced by the combination of characters you put in the second text box. You can change each instance one at a time or all of them en masse.

Image from creativelycheap.com

A note of caution: it is very easy to create new errors with the mass “Replace All” option. For instance, say you’ve written a scene where one of the characters is using a pen. You decide afterward that you want them to be writing with a pencil instead, so you do a “Replace All” to replace the word pen with pencil. Unfortunately, the “Replace All” option has now substituted pencil for every instance of the letters pen. Open had now become opencil, pensive is now pencilsive, and so forth. So use this carefully.

Here are a few easy clean-ups that you can use to make your manuscript more presentable:

     Find:                                                       Replace with:

     Repeated spaces ([space][space])           Single space                      

If you need an indent, use paragraph formatting or tabs. Repeat this replacement until you get 0 results.

     Find:                                                       Replace with:

     Repeated paragraph breaks (^p^p)         Single paragraph break (^p)

Most “Find and Replace” features recognize a “carat p” (^p) as a formula representing a paragraph break. If you need space between paragraphs use the “add space after” feature in paragraph formatting. Repeat this replacement until you get 0 results.

     Find:                                                                    Replace with:

     Space at beginning of paragraph (^p[space])      Paragraph break (^p)

Or if you used tabs for the indents at the beginning of your paragraph:

     Find:                     Replace with:

     (^p^t[space])         (^p^t)

The ^t indicates a “tab” in most programs. This replace ensures that your paragraphs will all be aligned properly. If you’ve already replaced all of the repeated spaces, you shouldn’t have to run this replacement more than once.

     Find:                                                                       Replace with:

     Space at the end of a paragraph ([space]^p)          Paragraph break (^p)

This is very minor clutter, but there’s no reason to leave it.

     Find:                                                      Replace with:

     Repeated periods (..)                             Single period (.)

Note: if you format your ellipses as three periods (…), this will cause trouble. That’s one of the reasons I format my ellipses with spaces (. . .) instead. If you don’t have spaces in your ellipses, you’ll want to replace repeated periods one at a time (using “replace” and “find next” instead of “replace all”).

     Find:                                                    Replace with:

     Comma and period (,.) and (.,)            Comma (,) or period (.)

This is another that you’ll have to replace one at a time, since it’s the only way to ensure that you’re putting in the correct punctuation. Fortunately, there probably won’t be many of these in your manuscript. They usually crop up were a large section of a sentence was deleted but the old punctuation was missed.

     Find:                                         Replace with:

     Apostrophes ( ′ )                       Apostrophes ( ‘ )

Note the difference between those two apostrophes—one is straight, and one is curved. The straight apostrophe is an artifact of older typing programs or some non-text-focused programs that appears from time to time. If you’re using Word or Google Docs, however, the program will automatically replace each old-fashioned straight apostrophe with a curved one that faces the correct direction. (Note that you don’t have to hunt for an old straight apostrophe to put into your “find” box. Just put an apostrophe, and the program will figure it out.)

     Find:                                         Replace with:

     Quotation marks ( ″ )                Quotation marks ( “ )

    

Same thing—old-fashioned “double-prime” straight quotation marks should be replaced with curved ones.

     Find:                                          Replace with:

     Double hyphens (--)                  Em dash (—) or (^+)

Double hyphens aren’t actually proper punctuation—you’ll want an actual em dash in there instead.

     Find:                                         Replace with:

     Repeated tabs (^t^t)                  Single tab (^t)

Note: if you have used tabs as indentation, and you have any sections that indented further than the rest of the document (quoted passages, for instance), this could mess them up. It might be wise to replace these one at a time.

Now, I’m not saying any of these tips will get you published. They will, however, help you polish out a few common errors from your manuscript. This will result in a more professional-looking submission, which is an important step toward getting published. Good luck!

Punctuation Problems: Separating Subjects From Verbs

If you have been reading the Story Polisher for a while now, you may have noticed that an understanding of the basic parts of the sentence is something I consider very useful (if not essential) for a writer. I try to explain things in such a way that you don’t need to know what a present participle is, much less the exact difference between it and a gerund. I don’t believe that you need to know and remember every grammatical term.

However, you do need to know the central, most basic parts of the sentence: the subject, the verb, and the direct object. So many of the errors that I explain here depend on your knowing these three things. The subject is the primary noun of the sentence, the person or thing that is performing an action. The verb is the action they are performing. The direct object is who or what they are doing something to (and isn’t always necessary for a complete sentence). Each of these parts of the sentence can be a single word:

     Katy       kissed       Gunther.

   Subject      Verb      Direct Object

Or a phrase:

     The red-haired little girl       has read       my favorite book.

                  Subject                       Verb             Direct Object

The ability to identify these three elements in any sentence you read or write is integral to being a good writer. There are so many errors that cannot be avoided if you don’t know where these three parts of the sentence are. For example, take this post that I saw going around Facebook and Twitter on December 31^st:

The problem with this example is simple: that comma should not be there. How do we know? Because it separates the subject of the sentence (Tomorrow) from its verb (is). There are almost no situations where this is permissible. But if you don’t know how to find your subject and verb, then this error will keep popping up.

This error is particularly common in sentences with a long, complex subject. For example:

     The boy that I’d had a crush on for the entire semester, had just given me a rose.

In that example, everything before the comma is the subject of the sentence. Many writers, when faced with such a long subject, feel like there should be a comma somewhere in the sentence. The writers who know how to identify their subjects and verbs, however, know that there should (almost) never be a comma in that part of the sentence. So make sure you always know where your subjects and verbs are—it could save your sentence someday.

P.S.

The only truly common exception to this rule is when you have a clarifying phrase, set apart by commas, between the subject and the verb. Here are some examples (two of which are from the paragraph above this one):

     My parents, Diana and Clark, want to talk to you.

     Many writers, when faced with such a long subject, feel like there should be a comma somewhere in the sentence.

     The writers who know how to identify their subjects and verbs, however, know that there should (almost) never be a comma in that part of the sentence.

If you remember from this post, a phrase that is set apart in this manner—be it with commas, em dashes, or parentheses—should be able to be removed from the sentence without rendering it illegible. That is, if you took the italicized phrases out of the examples above, they would still be whole sentences:

     My parents want to talk to you.

     Many writers feel like there should be a comma somewhere in the sentence.

     The writers who know how to identify their subjects and verbs know that there should (almost) never be a comma in that part of the sentence.

These commas serve to create an interjection, not a pause or break, and will always come in pairs. If you’re not inserting some sort of clarifying information, you probably shouldn’t have any commas between your subject and your verb.

P.P.S.

This rule applies to other breaking punctuation as well: there should generally not be any em dashes, semi-colons, colons, or periods separating your subject from your verb.

Punctuation Problems: Misplaced Commas

As we’ve discussed before, commas can be tricky. Even expert writers often forget to place commas where they’re needed or place an extra comma where it wasn’t needed. One of the most common comma mistakes is when one is inserted in a sentence to separate two actions being performed by one subject. For example:

     Incorrect: Boris picked up his knife, and finally began to carve.

     Correct: Boris picked up his knife and finally began to carve.

Good for you, Boris.

I see this all the time. I think these commas often occur because writers mentally narrate to themselves as they write and feel like they need a comma wherever their mental narration pauses or hesitates. After all, when people read out loud, they often pause slightly on commas. Read that last sentence out loud—you instinctively pause on the commas, don’t you? It’s just a slight hesitation, but it’s there.

But not every hesitation requires a comma. In the case of our example sentence, we have one subject—Boris—performing two sequential actions, and the actions are separated by “and.” In this sort of situation, you do not need to use a comma. Not ever. When you’re writing dialog, it may be tempting to include a comma to indicate a hesitation, but I recommend against it. How important is that brief hesitation, anyway? If it’s not pronounced enough to justify using ellipses, then it’s not important enough to require a comma.

Now, some people like to say that you should never use a comma when the word and is used to combine to actions or phrases. That’s not true. But when both actions are performed by the same subject, this will generally be the case.

When Long Sentences Get Out Of Hand

One of the most frequently-given bits of advice in regards to prose is to vary up the length of your sentences. If every sentence in a paragraph is the same length or the same format, your writing will lack the natural rhythm and flow that most readers unconsciously pick up on in good prose. A paragraph of short sentences will feel choppy; a paragraph of long sentences can become fatiguing. A mix of the two is usually preferable.

The problem is that long sentences are more difficult to write well than shorter sentences. It’s like the difference between building a small cottage and building a towering skyscraper: both skyscrapers and longer sentences require more complex and robust construction. The longer the sentence, the greater the chance that some sort of grammatical error will creep in and ruin things.

But even when a long sentence is grammatically correct, it has a greater chance of confusing readers. The primary purpose of sentences and paragraphs is to divide information into logical, bite-size chunks that can be quickly analyzed and assimilated. Readers are trained to absorb information one sentence at a time, and a long sentence forces them to process more information at once. For example:

     The house was little more than a dingy shack crammed between two other huts at the westernmost edge of what passed for a village on this hard, narrow path that wound through the wilted woods off of the main highway.

That’s a lot of information to throw at your readers in one chunk. By the time a reader gets to the end of that sentence, they barely remember where the sentence started. A sentence should usually contain from one to three pieces of information (usually closely-related information). Let’s look at the information given in our example sentence:

     The house was little more than a dingy shack (Description of the house)

     crammed between two other huts (Physical situation of the house)

     at the westernmost edge of (Location of the houses)

     what passed for a village (Editorial commentary on size of village)

     on this hard, narrow path (Relative location of village)

     that wound through the wilted woods (Location of path)

     off of the main highway. (Relative location of woods)

That’s seven pieces of information—too much for one sentence, especially one without a colon or semicolon. We should break the sentence into more than one. How do we decide where to break it up? Look at the bits of information; we have three pertaining to the house, two pertaining to the village, and two more that are really just intended to give us more details about the location of the village. So we’ll delete the unneeded bit about the path, which isn’t actually serving the intended aim of describing the location of the village, and then we’ll divide this sentence into two—one about the house, and one about the village:

     The house was little more than a dingy shack crammed between two other huts. They stood at the westernmost edge of what passed for a village in the wilted woods off the main highway. 

Now, we could also end that first sentence with a semicolon (or maybe even an em-dash) if, for some reason, we were determined to keep all of that information in one sentence. That’s usually the difference between long sentences that work and the ones that don’t—those that work make careful use of breaking punctuation to create the needed pauses and divides in the information they contain, thereby making it easier for readers to assimilate one chunk at a time.

On Commas and Splicing

Commas.

Do you have trouble figuring out when to place a comma in your sentence and when not to? Good; that means you pass the Turing test—you’re human. There are a lot of ways to use commas and a lot of ways to misuse commas. Many of those uses and misuses can be difficult to explain clearly, which is why I’ve waited so long to broach the subject. But in my recent reading and editing I have been coming across so many misused commas that I figure it’s about time to jump in and address some of these issues. Starting with:

The Comma Splice

A comma splice is when you have two independent clauses (i.e. two complete sentences) joined by a comma. For the purposes of this column, we’re going to consider it a form of run-on sentence. Here’s an example of a comma splice:

     I won’t make it to the meeting tonight, you will need to hand out assignments.

See how this is really two sentences? Each clause has its own subject performing its own action (“I won’t” and “you will,” respectfully) and so could stand perfectly well on its own. If you remember from the post on breaking punctuation, the comma is used to separate closely-related information. As a general rule, if you have two clauses with distinct subjects and verbs, those clauses should not be separated by a comma.

If there's anything that the media has taught us, it's that splicing is bad.

Simply removing the comma won’t fix the problem:

     I won’t make it to the meeting tonight you will need to hand out assignments.

That’s still a run-on sentence. The problem can be fixed, however, by changing out the comma for other punctuation or by adding some clarifying words:

     I won’t make it to the meeting tonight; you will need to hand out assignments.

     I won’t make it to the meeting tonight—you will need to hand out assignments.

     I won’t make it to the meeting tonight. You will need to hand out assignments.

     I won’t make it to the meeting tonight, so you will need to hand out assignments.

     Since I won’t make it to the meeting tonight, you will need to hand out assignments.

     I won’t make it to the meeting tonight, which means you will need to hand out assignments.

Just remember: if both clauses can stand as sentences, they’ll probably something more than a comma to connect them.

However

One of the trickiest things about comma splices is that they’re not always a bad thing.

 

Wait, yes they are.

Well-versed, reputable authors will use them all the time. They're all over the place. For instance, you may be familiar with this famous quote from Julius Caeser:

     I came, I saw, I conquered.

That right there is three distinct clauses, each with a subject and a verb, separated by a pair of comma splices. Even the picky Strunk and White noted that splices are sometimes acceptable when the clauses are short and similar in form.

     The door slammed shut, the lights went out, the air went cold.

Comma splices are especially easy to justify in dialog or in poetic writing, as they can help mimic the cadences of spoken language more clearly than other punctuation might.

So if comma splices aren’t always bad, how do we determine when to use them? Well, if you’re looking to submit to an editor, I recommend playing it safe and just avoiding them. In her excellent book Eats, Shoots & Leaves, Lynne Truss says, “so many highly respected writers observe the splice comma that a rather unfair rule emerges on this one: only do it if you're famous. Done knowingly by an established writer, the comma splice is effective, poetic, dashing. Done equally knowingly by people who are not published writers, it can look weak or presumptuous. Done ignorantly by ignorant people, it is awful.”

If that seems unfair, well . . . comma splices really can be awful if you’re not absolutely sure what you’re doing. It’s the old “you have to know the rules before you can break them” advice. In my opinion, you’re better off avoiding comma splices until you, your editors, and your audience are all confident that you know what you’re doing.

P.S.

Somewhere out in our audience there is someone who read that advice and said something along the lines of, “Bah! You don’t get published by playing it safe! You have to experiment, share your soul, be bold and daring!” I have two things to say to that reader.

First: that was actually a pretty decent use of comma splices in that last sentence of yours. Good job.

Second: you are wrong. Oh, your sentiment is good—go out there and experiment and be bold and daring. More power to you. But that sentiment does not apply to grammar. It doesn’t apply to the basics of solid prose. Experiment with your plot, share your soul through your characters, and be bold and daring with your themes and content. But learn to write all of that in a clear, legible, and simple manner. Learning to write correctly will get you closer to being published than all the creativity that you can muster. 

In other words—there is no comma splice that is so bold and daring that it will get you published. But if you let comma splices make a mess of your writing, it just may keep you from getting published. Play it safe and don’t let that happen.

Punctuation Problems: The Apostrophe

When writing fiction in English, the apostrophe ( ' ) is generally used in only two ways.

Omission of letters

The apostrophe indicates when a letter or letters have been omitted from a word. This happens most commonly with contractions, or the shortening of two or more words into one word. Do not becomes don't, we are becomes we're, etc. 

Letters can also be omitted from a word when the writer is attempting to convey an accent. The most common example of this is when a character with a Southern or Western American accent leaves "Gs" off of the end of a word, i.e. runnin' or somethin'. This can be tiresome and difficult to read, however, so do it sparingly.

Possessives

Apostrophes are also used to create possessives. You know the drill, I’m sure. You add an apostrophe and an S (‘s) to the end of the word to indicate that the word is now being used to imply possession. Brad’s badge and his wife’s sweater.

Note: even if a word ends in s, you still add an ‘s to the end to create a possessive, if the word is singular. Chris’s computer and the actress’s costume. If the word has an s on the end because it is plural, then you only add an apostrophe to denote possession. The Johnsons’ house or the babies' laughs.

Do Nots

You do not use an apostrophe to create a plural. Not ever. (This was done in certain cases in the past, but has largely fallen out of use nowadays. Some people still cling to it, but you don't need to.)

It's is a contraction meaning it is. This is the one place where a possessive does not use an apostrophe: its means "belonging to it." Don't mix them up.

Do not use an apostrophe with a verb. Not ever. Wrong: She love's me. Right: She loves me.

Punctuation in Parenthetical Phrases

 A parenthetical phrase is a short statement inserted into the main body of a sentence to give additional information. It is usually set apart from the rest of the sentence by means of commas, em dashes, or parentheses. Some examples:

1. John, my oldest brother, came to see me in the hospital yesterday.
2. The floor was made of stone—or at least it looked and felt like stone—and was freezing cold beneath his feet.
3. She made me pelmeni (a type of Russian dumpling) and baked potatoes for dinner.

The punctuation you should use depends on the necessity and importance of the information you’re inserting. If the information you’re adding is necessary for the reader to understand the sentence, or at least very helpful, then you’ll want to use commas. If the information is important but not actually necessary, or if it doesn’t flow too well with the rest of the sentence—as in the case of example two above—then you should generally use em dashes. If the information is extremely superfluous or disconnected from the rest of the sentence, then you’ll use parentheses.

As was the case with breaking punctuation in this post, there is often more than one possible choice when you’re deciding which punctuation to use with your parenthetical phrase. Which punctuation you use will usually depend on how strongly you want to connect the parenthetical to the rest of the sentence.

Setting apart a parenthetical phrase with em dashes is also a useful tool if the sentence already contains several commas, or if the parenthetical phrase itself contains commas. For example, this sentence:

• Whenever I went to the theater, I would always invite the group, consisting of John, Mandy, and Gus, so that I wouldn't have to sit alone.

reads a little bit more clearly like this:

• Whenever I went to the theater, I would always invite the group—consisting of John, Mandy, and Gus—so that I wouldn't have to sit alone.

Parentheses can also be used in these cases, but be wary about using them too often in fiction. Generally, you should avoid parentheses in your story unless a narrator with a strong personality is speaking—usually in either first-person or third-person omniscient perspective. Even then, parentheses should be used rarely.