McAnally's (The Community Pub) > Author Craft

How far to take Grammar

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Aminar:
I'm mainly thinking proper use of commas and semicolons right now.

The purpose of writing a story is to entertain and convey the situation you are writing as convincingly as possible.  As a reader I have always perceived commas and semicolons(and dashes/ellipses) as pauses of varying length.  Stylistically that is how I'd like to approach them, but grammatically this is incorrect(At least according to MS Word, I never payed much attention in actual English classes, my knowledge is largely intuitive and observational.) 

How should I be approaching this, the intuitive way, or the by the letter of the rules approach?

Darkshore:
The 90's way of teaching English seems to have embedded this way of thinking into many student's heads , but that isn't really how you should use them at all. If an editor looks at a manuscript flooded with miss-used comma's he or she would probably be hard pressed to give it much thought. You should really pick this up. Its helped me. http://www.amazon.com/Elements-Style-4th-William-Strunk/dp/0205313426/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1320711330&sr=8-2

Shecky:
First, learn the rules. That's ALWAYS the first step. Once you've learned the rules, then you can figure out if and when you can (and sometimes should) break them.

Starbeam:

--- Quote from: Shecky on November 08, 2011, 01:29:43 AM ---First, learn the rules. That's ALWAYS the first step. Once you've learned the rules, then you can figure out if and when you can (and sometimes should) break them.

--- End quote ---
Yup. This.

Aminar:
I know the rules, I've just never had much cause to use them and seem to be told I need semicolons all over the place.  More than I've seen(read noticed, I may have seen things with more and not noticed) in anything else at any rate.  Looking at a few other published novels, semicolons seem to be used rarely, and have commas in places where semicolons supposedly should be.

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