… but
the proliferation of incorrect punctuation, misspellings, typos,
and other basic grammatical errors is, nevertheless, distressing.
Weird spellings and grammar used to be the defining attributes
of spam; now they are increasing rapidly everywhere, with journalists
and copywriters as the worst offenders. Sadly, this has begun to
penetrate poetry publications as well. As the person responsible
for retyping and formatting the 2005 Wisconsin Poets' Calendar poems, I’d like to mention the most frequent bugaboos,
as well as other dislikes and “cringe factors” mentioned
by writing instructors and editors of literary journals.
Yikes
to Watch Out For
Many poets dispense with punctuation, capital letters, and other conventions
of the written language. Feel free to omit punctuation if you like, but watch
for altered meanings. Conversely, commas are frequently inserted unnecessarily: “eats,
shoots, and leaves.” And whether you punctuate or not, be consistent.
It drives editors (and readers) crazy trying to figure out why, in a poem
with reasonably ordinary sentence structure, some stanzas or lines are correctly
punctuated and others are left partly or completely naked.
Capital
Crimes
A similar consistency is preferred for capital letters: you can use normal
capitalization, capitalize the first letter of each line, or have no caps
at all, but there ought to be some rationale behind a desultory sprinkling.
The William Blake school of Random Capitalization is Passé. Note that
capitalizing Spring, Autumn, and the like is also archaic. Many novice poets
are enamored of the lower-case first-person nominative singular pronoun “i”;
many poetry consumers perceive this as either affected and overly precious,
or disingenuously self-effacing—and best left to e.e. cummings.
Serial
Killers
Remember that series, e.g. “one, two, and three,” correctly have
commas following each element; the one preceding “and” may be
optional, but its omission can have interesting results—as in the dedication To
my parents, Ayn Rand and God. The omission is necessary to indicate
that a following phrase modifies the series: “Tom, Dick, and Harry, who spent
the night in jail” means that Harry spent the night in jail; “Tom, Dick and
Harry, who spent the night in jail” means that all of them did. When you
have a series of phrases with internal commas, use semicolons between the
phrases instead of commas for clarity. Commas do not replace conjunctions;
semicolons replace conjunctions.
And
You Can Quote Me
Quotation marks (“ ”) are used in actual quotes, of course, but
also to indicate the writer’s disbelief in the cited claim: a “delightful” surprise.
In this country, terminal punctuation precedes the quotation mark. A quote
inside another quote takes single quotation marks (‘ ’). Within
quoted material, a mistake in grammar or spelling that you know better than
to make and want to draw attention to is indicated by [sic]—Latin for “thusly”—following
the offending expression.
Compounding
Mistakes
Anyone is one word; no one is two. Anymore is
one word only when used as an adverb, as “She doesn’t run anymore.” “Is
there any more spaghetti?” should still be two words. Anywhere and anybody (unless
you are speaking of a random cadaver) are not two words, nor are everywhere,
everybody, whatever, whenever, however, forever, evermore, and nevermore. All
right is
two words. With two Ls. Already is one with one. Many others
are in limbo; as two-word terms get older and wrinklier, they seem to
first become hyphenated and then coalesce into one word. Go with your
spell checker, spell-checker, or spellchecker, your favorite dictionary,
or your tastes. Hyphenations not only indicate compound words, but are
always inserted when using a phrase as an adjective or noun (state-of-the-art
garrotte, stick-to-itiveness).
Dashing
Through the Slush
Dashes are not hyphens! Dashes come in two flavors, em- (—) and en-
(–). An em-dash may be indicated by two hyphens (--); an en-dash is
not indicated by anything other than itself, and is only used for numbers
(1–10) and dates (1885–1887). An em-dash is used to indicate
an aside, or a hesitation or break longer than that indicated by a comma,
semicolon, or colon—a very pregnant pause, so to speak. It
is also frequently used by inexperienced poets to embellish every other line
break. (Mac users: en-dash is Option-Hyphen; em-dash is Option-Shift-Hyphen.)
Speak
On, Sweet Ellipsis
Ellipses . . . what would novice poets do without a myriad of these to
insert not only at line breaks, but also at the slightest provocation? Fortunately,
the supply eventually gives out and neophytes have to start using mundane
punctuation, unless they are practicing for time-travel to the 19th century.
Ellipses are used to indicate omitted material or an unfinished sentence,
and are correctly used . . . with a space fore and aft, and a space between each period. Note that this is according to the Chicago Manual of Style; ellipses as a character are part of many fonts, e.g. …, most of which omit the interior spacing. They can be achieved by Option-; for you Mac fans.
Adjective
Viewpoint
When more than one adjective modifies a noun, the use of a comma between
them is determined by whether the adjectives all modify the same thing to
the same degree. If all the adjectives can be omitted without changing the
essential point of the sentence, there should be commas between all of them,
but any adjective critical to interpretation should not be preceded by a
comma, e.g. The small, dirty children cried every night. vs. The
small, dirty orphaned children cried for their mother. If all the adjectives
are required for clarity, no commas should be used: lower-case first-person
nominative singular pronoun.
For
Your Protection
Misplaced apostrophes are my pet peeve of all time—outside the political
arena, that is. Apostrophes indicate a possessive or a contraction. Instances
of misuse are so bountiful as to make samples unnecessary, but for a plethora
of read-’em-and-weeps, see the Apostrophe
Protection Society, a laudable institution that deserves your support.
I’m only going to say that ’s at the end of a word makes
it a possessive or a contraction of “____ is,” not a plural; that ’til and till are
the only accepted contractions of until—you may not have your
double L and apostrophe too; and that it’s is not, never,
a possessive: it is only, now and forevermore, a contraction of it is.
Remember that no possessive pronoun ever contains an apostrophe—their is
a possessive, they’re is a contraction of they are,
and there is somewhere else.
Recommended
Reading
The Well-Tempered Sentence, The Transitive Vampire, The Deluxe Transitive
Vampire, Out of the Loud Hound of Darkness, and anything else by Karen
Elizabeth Gordon
Eats, Shoots & Leaves* by Lynne Truss
A Manual of Style (I’ve got the Chicago Twelfth Edition,
Revised, but any of them should do just fine)
A dictionary—the bigger, the better; the ne plus ultra being the OED
*
Regrettably, the jacket of Eats, Shoots & Leaves itself
contains (in my opinion) two errors, which demonstrates Murphy’s
Law of Finger-Pointing: any letter, essay, or book about errors
will inadvertently promulgate at least one glaring example of the
type deplored within. When you find mine, gloat to your heart’s
content.
© 2005 F.J.
Bergmann