The truth is that, offhand, I can't think of one for this week, but I did have a quick scan of the Internet to check out other writers' blogs and found this one that provides "21 harsh but eye-opening tips from great writers".
I'd suggest a visit. You'd have to love some of these from the likes of Hemmingway, Twain, Orwell, Vonnegut, Parker, Gaiman and others.
Now I'm going to stop using semi-colons. Again. What are they for anyway? We've always had an uneasy relationship!
Western Australian writer musings - for writers and lovers of writing, novelists, poets, writing networks, arts, music, theatre, creativity, formerly book length project group
Surely no other punctuation mark has so polarised opinion as the semi-colon. For me, they are wonderful things that are both much maligned and little understood. They are used to link independent clauses (subject and predicate) together in the same sentence without having to use either a full stop or a conjunction (i.e. 'and') between them. But semi-colons should only be indulged in sparingly. One per paragraph should be your absolute maximum.
ReplyDeleteOh Glen, now I'm really torn. To use or not to use; that is the question. Or - that is the question? Or: that is the question. A simple comma, perhaps? What is right, and what is right for the story might be two different things.
DeleteOf course. Don't force them if they don't suit your style. They just happen to suit me.
DeleteNeil Gaiman's No. 18 is the best, along with the 'have the courage to write badly' part of No. 16. Vonnegut might have been right about some things, but he's wrong about semi-colons (IMHO.)
ReplyDeleteHow do you feel about exclamation marks? How many is too many, do you think?
DeleteUse exclamation marks with extreme caution. And then only ever in dialogue (!) :)
Delete