Please, people--follow the rules of punctuation in your queries and manuscripts! I don't want to stifle your creative process, but commas, quotation marks, semicolons and their various friends and relations exist for a reason. They define and support the text.
Think of them as the underwires and SPANX of prose.
So, if you aspire to write, PLEASE learn proper usage. Read Eats, Shoots & Leaves if you'd like an entertaining education on the subject. I'll forgive occasional typos, but constant errors make writers look ignorant and make their work unreadable.
And I give a posthumous "thank you" to Dr. Cole, who used to take 10 points off for every mis-use (by omission or commission) of a semicolon on our papers.
5 comments:
Poor 'punctuation,' makes writers look.. bad!!!!!
I think I hurt something writing that.
I really couldn't agree more with this post. I've read so many self published books this year with terrible grammar. It's made me rather depressed.
I couldn't agree more. Of course, I have it a bit easier than a lot of writers in that I have a degree in English -and- have spent some time working as an editor (even if it was a long, long time ago (but not in another galaxy)). It's one of those things that if you know you can't do it on your own, you need to hire some help.
I even have a hard time with blogs that have consistently poor usage. As in, I quit reading them. If I can't read your blog, I'm certainly not going to read your book.
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