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Reddit mentions of A Dash of Style: The Art and Mastery of Punctuation
Sentiment score: 1
Reddit mentions: 2
We found 2 Reddit mentions of A Dash of Style: The Art and Mastery of Punctuation. Here are the top ones.
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Punctuation guide for creative writers.
Specs:
| Height | 7.8 Inches |
| Length | 5.5 Inches |
| Number of items | 1 |
| Release date | April 2007 |
| Weight | 0.4 Pounds |
| Width | 0.6 Inches |
Here's Noah Lukeman on the semicolon in A Dash of Style:
> The primary function of the semicolon is to connect two complete (and thematically similar) sentences, thereby making them one. . .[G]rammatically the semicolon is never necessary; two short sentences can always coexist without being connected. Artistically, though, the semicolon opens a world of possibilities, and can lend a huge impact. In this sense, it is the punctuation mark best suited for creative writers.
Lukeman quotes John Trimble:
> The semicolon is efficient: it allows you to eliminate most of those conjunctions or prepositions that are obligatory with the comma--words like whereas, because, for, or, but, while, and.
And he quotes Lewis Thomas:
> Sometimes you get a glimpse of a semicolon coming, a few lines farther on, and it is like seeing a wooden bench just at a bend in the road ahead, a place where you can expect to sit for a moment, catching your breath.
John Gardner is a master of punctuation. He uses the em dash, parentheses and semicolons like a champ. To me it evokes a voice that's closer to how thoughts emerge than does the simple declarative statement, which makes my brain happy. One man's luscious thought is another's tortured prose. Here's an excerpt from The Art of Fiction:
> Thus it appears that to make us see and feel vividly what his characters see and feel--to draw us into the characters' world as if we were born to it--the writer must do more than simply make up characters and then somehow explain and authenticate them (giving them the right kinds of motorcycles and beards, exactly the right memories and jargon). He must shape simultaneously (in an expanding creative moment) his characters, plot, and setting, each inextricably connected to the others; he must make his whole world in a single, coherent gesture, as a potter makes a pot; or, as Coleridge puts it, he must copy, with his finite mind, the process of the infinite "I AM."
I don't think it was this book.