A Dash of Style (22 page)

The semicolon coming on the heels of the colon here is unusual indeed. Most writers would have opted for a period instead. While it is not necessarily "correct," it is by no means incorrect either. Some will like it, others won't, but in either case, it helps define Poe's particular style.

It seems there is as much to unlearn from the great writers as there is to learn. James Joyce disliked the quotation mark, and opted for dashes instead. E. E. Cummings disliked capital letters and printed everything in lowercase. Emily Dickinson used an abundance of dashes. George Bernard Shaw used an abundance of colons; Virginia Woolf, an abundance of semicolons. Melville used semicolons questionably. Gertrude Stein and Cormac McCarthy avoided commas. And Shakespeare did anything he wanted.

What can we take away from all of this? It is important to break the rules, especially when they can be as nebulous as they are in the punctuation world. Indeed, breaking the rules will enable breakthroughs in your writing, in your voice, your style, rhythm, viewpoint. Experiment as much as you can. But at the end of the day, only keep what works for the text, what best reflects the content. Breaking the rules only works when a writer has great respect for the rules he breaks.

By this point in the book, if you've applied yourself and worked with the exercises, you will have a good handle on the marks of
punctu-
ation a creative writer needs. Now the work begins. Now you must see if you can make them all work together in one grand symphony of punctuation. It is time to put your knowledge to the test, and take a giant, first step into the world of punctuation.

As you do, remember to keep in mind two important principles. The first is that there is great merit to punctuating scarcely, only when you absolutely must. Just as word economy should be strived for, so should punctuation economy.

The second is to let your punctuation unfold organically, as the text demands. Punctuation should never be forced on a text, never be brought in to rescue you from confusing sentence construction. It is not here to save—it is here to complement. This is an important distinction. The sentence itself must do the work. If it does, the punctuation will coexist seamlessly, and you will never have an awkward struggle to squeeze in a dash, or make a semicolon work. If you find yourself having such a struggle, reexamine your sentence structure, your word choice. More likely than not, you will need to rewrite, not repunctuate. As we have seen many times throughout this book, in the best writing the punctuation is seamless, invisible, at one with the text. It will never stand out. You know you are punctuating the best you possibly can when, ironically, you don't even know it's there.

Punctuating masterfully is an ongoing struggle, and the destination will always be somewhere off on the horizon. But it is a journey worthwhile. If you cultivate awareness and are willing to learn, punctuation will perpetually teach you something new about yourself. As we learned throughout the book, punctuation reveals the writer, and revelation is the first step toward self-awareness. If you are willing to listen to what the page is telling you about yourself, and humble enough to change, you will become a better writer. Punctuation is here to point the way.