EXERCISES
Throughout the book I will give you exercises that enable you to experiment with sentence construction. What you are really experimenting with is different approaches to writing, which in turn will spark different ways of thinking and even creative ideas. The ramifications should lead far beyond the sentence itself.
Let's grapple with the period, and see how it can influence your writing.
• Start a new novel (or short story), and let the opening sentence run at least one page long. Where does this lead you? How did you compensate? Did you find a new narration style? Did not stopping allow you more creative freedom? Can you apply this technique elsewhere in your writing?
• Start a new novel (or short story), and don't let any sentence run more than six words. Where does this lead you? How did you compensate? Did you find a new narration style? Did the constant stopping allow you more creative freedom? Can you apply this technique elsewhere in your writing?
• Imagine a character who thinks in long sentences. Who would this be? Why would he think this way? Capture his viewpoint on the page, using long sentences. Do the long sentences help bring out who he is? Do they make the text feel one and the same with the character? Can you apply this technique elsewhere in your writing?
• Imagine a character who thinks in short sentences. Who would this be? Why would he think this way? Capture his viewpoint on the page, using short sentences. Do the short sentences help bring out who he is? Do they make the text feel one and the same with the character? Can you apply this technique elsewhere in your writing?
• Choose a short sentence from your work, ideally one already in a cluster of short sentences. Find a way to make it longer without combining it with the material preceding or following it—in other words, add to the idea in the sentence. See how far you can stretch it. Could there be any more to this idea before you go on to the next sentence? Are you harvesting individual sentences for all they're worth? Can you apply this technique elsewhere in your work?
• Choose a series of short sentences from your work, possibly in an area where you feel the action moves too quickly. Combine two sentences, adding material to each if need be. Then combine three. How does it change the flow of the paragraph? Of the scene? What do you gain? Can you apply this technique elsewhere in your work?
• Choose a long sentence from your manuscript, ideally one already in a cluster of long sentences. To decide if it needs shortening, consider the following: Does it comprise several ideas? Is it hard to grasp? Is it hard to catch one's breath? Does its length match other sentence lengths? Find a way to shorten it, without combining it with the material in the sentence preceding or following it. How much can you shorten it? Was there any extraneous material here? Can you apply this technique elsewhere in your work?
• Choose a series of long sentences from your manuscript, ideally in a place where the pace slows. Choose two sentences with similar ideas and find a way to combine them, shortening each in the process. Now try it with three sentences. What did you have to sacrifice in order to combine them? How does it change the flow of the paragraph? Of the scene? What do you gain? Can you apply this technique elsewhere in your work?
• Choose a paragraph where all of the sentences are of drastically varying length. Adjust the sentences (by either shortening or lengthening) to make them all of uniform length. How does it read now? What do you gain by this? What do you lose? Can you apply this technique elsewhere in your work?
• Choose a paragraph where all of the sentences are of uniform length. Adjust the sentences (by either shortening or lengthening) to make the sentence lengths radically contrast with one another. How does it read now? What do you gain by this? What do you lose? Can you apply this technique elsewhere in your work?
• Take all the principles you've just learned, and apply them to any page in your manuscript. First read it aloud, focusing on how the sentences read individually and on whether any feel too long or short. Use the principles you've learned to identify sentences that will need shortening or lengthening. If you can fix them by simply using a period, great. If you'll also need to employ a comma, semicolon, colon, or other marks, then read on.
THE COMMA IS the speed bump of the punctuation world. With its power to pause, the comma controls the ebb and flow of a sentence, its rhythm, its speed. Based on frequency alone, the comma wields tremendous influence, outnumbering the period by at least three to one, and outnumbering other punctuation marks by at least five to one. And yet, paradoxically, it is also the mark most open to interpretation. The comma has few hard rules, and as a result is the mark most often misused.
The comma can be used to divide. "The word comma is derived from Greek komma (clause), which came from koptein (to cut off). Indeed, a comma normally does 'cut off' one part of a sentence from another," says Harry Shaw says in Punctuate It Right! In this sense, the comma can control meaning itself, since the same sentence cut in different ways takes on entirely new meaning.
Yet the comma can also connect. Two sentences can become one by virtue of a comma, and a sentence can be made longer in its own
right by tacking on a comma. In this capacity, the comma is a people person, a middleman. It likes to be connected, and to make connections. Both divider and connector, the comma is schizophrenic.
The comma is supremely important if for no other reason than its relationship to the period. Without the comma, the period is often left in the cold, waiting at the end of a long sentence without a rest stop. To grasp the comma's influence, imagine a long sentence without any commas:
A sentence like this without any commas makes it nearly impossible for the reader to know when to pause if not when to stop and also makes him feel as if the period cannot come soon enough indeed should have come several moments ago.
You have to reread it several times just to figure out its natural rhythm and grasp its meaning. Why would you, as a writer, want to make the reader work twice as hard? With the proper use of the comma, you won't have to.
HOW TO USE IT
The comma is probably the hardest of all punctuation marks to master. Not only is it the most flexible, not only are its uses the most varied, but it also carries few rules and has been used (and not used) by great authors in many different ways.
That said, you can learn to master the comma. Its creative uses are many, and they must each be examined carefully:
• To connect. The comma can connect several half ideas (or clauses) into one grand idea (the sentence). It is the glue that holds a sentence together. If a short sentence is lacking in fullness of
meaning, a comma can step in to connect it to the sentences that follow:
I sat on a bench. I opened my book. I removed the bookmark.
I sat on a bench, opened my book, and removed the bookmark.
The commas here have connected three infantile sentences into one more elegant sentence.
• To provide clarity. If a sentence conveys several ideas, a comma can help distinguish them. Without a comma, you risk readers reading from one clause to the other without grasping where one idea ends and another begins. Subsequently, each idea won't have the impact it could otherwise, won't have the proper time and space to be digested. Consider:
She told me I looked like an old boyfriend of hers then turned and walked away.
Here we feel no pause between the first clause and the second, no time to digest. One comma, though, can make all the difference:
She told me I looked like an old boyfriend of hers, then turned and walked away.
Now we feel the proper pause, can fully process each of these clauses. In this capacity, commas act like buoys in the sea, letting us know when we're leaving one zone and entering another.
•To pause. This is what the comma was built for, where it really shines. A comma allows the reader to catch his breath (as he would if reading aloud), and prevents a long sentence from reading like stream of consciousness. For example, read the following sentence al
oud:
He raised his rifle cocked it adjusted his neck and had the deer in his sights but when he went to pull the trigger his hand started shaking again just like it had every day for the last two weeks or maybe three he couldn't be sure.
With no chance to pause, the reader hopelessly builds momentum until he crashes into the period. It is the equivalent of taking one huge breath and seeing how much you can say before you burst. Sentences were not meant to be read that way, and should not be written that way. A few commas, though, can transform the reading experience:
He raised his rifle, cocked it, adjusted his neck, and had the deer in his sights, but when he went to pull the trigger his hand started shaking again, just like it had every day for the last two weeks, or maybe three, he couldn't be sure.
• The comma can be used to indicate a passing of time, particularly in creative writing. This is something I rarely see employed well. Consider:
John thought about that and said . . .
Although technically correct, we don't feel a pause here between John's thinking and his speaking. But if we add a comma:
John thought about that, and said . . .
Now we feel the moment. It is subtle, but a well-placed comma adds just enough time in a scene to make a difference, one that works unconsciously on the reader.
Consider this example from Jean Toomer's short story "Blood-Burning Moon":
Up from the skeleton walls, up from the rotting floor boards and the solid hand-hewn beams of oak of the pre-war cotton factory, dusk came.
The commas here, particularly since they encapsulate such long clauses, make us really pause, make us feel the approach of dusk.
Lynne Truss addresses this point with an apt story in Eats, Shoots & Leaves: "Thurber was once asked by a correspondent: 'Why did you have a comma in the sentence, "After dinner, the men went into the living room"?' And his answer was probably one of the loveliest things ever said about punctuation. 'This particular comma,' Thurber explained, 'was Ross's way of giving the men time to push back their chairs and stand up.'"
• The comma can alter the very meaning of a sentence. Consider:
The windows with the glass treatment are holding up well.
The windows, with the glass treatment, are holding up well.
In the latter sentence it's understood that the windows are holding up well because of the glass treatment; in the former, it can be understood that the windows, which were created with a glass treatment, are holding up well in general. The entire meaning of the sentence changes, simply due to the comma placement.
• The comma can be used to offset a clause or idea, to allow it to stand out when it might otherwise be lost. Consider:
Taking medicine and eating well coupled with exercise can help assure a healthy life.
Taking medicine and eating well, coupled with exercise, can help assure a healthy life.
In the latter example, the commas force us to pause before and after "coupled with exercise," offsetting it and emphasizing a point that might have been glossed over otherwise.
• The comma can be used to maximize word economy. Placing a comma in the right spot can enable you to delete several words. For example:
I liked chocolate and she liked vanilla.
I liked chocolate, she vanilla.
All in all, the comma has so many different creative uses and can enhance a work creatively in so many ways, that it can be detrimental not to use it. Like its cousin the period, it is one of the few marks of punctuation that must be used throughout.
Let's look at the comma in the hands of a master. Joseph Conrad, in Heart of Darkness, uses commas to create a memorable setting:
A narrow and deserted street in deep shadow, high houses, innu-merable windows with Venetian blinds, a dead silence, grass sprouting between the stones, imposing carriage archways right
and left, immense double doors standing ponderously ajar.
It's amazing what he achieves in one sentence, all with the use of commas. He has created an entire setting. Each comma not only helps increase the list, but also separates, gives us time to ponder each aspect of the setting. By inserting all of this information under the umbrella of a single sentence, divided only by commas, Conrad asks us to experience this entire setting as one thought, asks us to realize the whole picture of this desolate place in one unremitting image.
Here's another example, this from the opening sentence of J. M. Coetzee's novel Disgrace:
For a man of his age, fifty-two, divorced, he has, to his mind, solved the problem of sex rather well.
This example comes at the suggestion of critically acclaimed novelist and writing teacher Paul Cody, and is an example that he teaches repeatedly. He offers this analysis: "This is a seemingly simple sentence, broken into six parts, using only commas. The language is spare, but the use of the commas give the sentence great power and irony. The reader has to pause five times, and the sense of the man is that he's a control freak, he's got everything in order, he's figured it all out. But each part of the sentence undermines what he's saying. We know he's got it all wrong, that he's figured out nothing, that he has no understanding whatsoever of sex, love, the human heart. And each comma makes us pause, is a nail in the coffin of his soul, his isolation."
James Baldwin uses the comma heavily in his story "Sonny's Blues":
I read about it in the paper, in the subway, on my way to work. I read it, and I couldn't believe it, and I read it again. Then perhaps I just stared at it, at the newsprint spelling out his name, spelling
out the story. I stared at it in the swinging lights of the subway car, and in the faces and bodies of the people, and in my own face, trapped in the darkness which roared outside.
The abundant commas here reflect the narrator's experience as he's reading the piece, reflect his being shocked by the news, and needing multiple pauses to take it all in. John Cheever uses the comma for a different effect in his story "The Enormous Radio":
Jim and Irene Westcott were the kind of people who seem to strike that satisfactory average of income, endeavor, and respectability that is reached by the statistical reports in college alumni bulletins. They were the parents of two young children, they had been married nine years, they lived on the twelfth floor of an apartment house near Sutton Place, they went to the theatre on an average of 10.3 times a year, and they hoped someday to live in Westchester.
The commas here mimic the feeling of detailing items in a list. Except the grocery list here is their lives, which have been planned out too perfectly, too methodically. The commas subtly hint at this.
In her story "What I Know," Victoria Lancelotta uses commas to complement the content:
This is the sort of air that sticks, the kind you want to pull off you, away from your skin, or wipe away in great sluicing motions and back into the water where it surely belongs, because this is not the sort of air that anyone could breathe. You could die, drown, trying to breathe this.
We almost feel as if we're suffocating, drowning in her commas, which is exactly the type of air she's trying to describe.
In one of the great poems of the twentieth century, "The Waste Land," T. S. Eliot opens with a comma-laden sentence:
April is the cruelest month, breeding Lilacs out of the dead land, mixing Memory and desire, stirring Dull roots with spring rain.
Eliot could have chosen to separate each of these images into several sentences, but instead he chose to keep them together, in one long sentence, connected by commas. By doing so, he forces us to take in the image of April in one long thought, and to fully realize how cruel it is.
Perhaps because of this reason, because of its ability to connect several images in one thought, you'll find that the comma is often used in literature when introducing a character. Consider this example from Saul Bellow's "Leaving the Yellow House":
You couldn't help being fond of Hattie. She was big and cheerful, puffy, comic, boastful, with a big round back and stiff, rather long legs.
From Ella Leffland's "The Linden Tree":
Giulio was a great putterer. You could always see him sweeping the front steps or polishing the doorknobs, stopping to gossip with the neighbors. He was a slight, pruny man of sixty-eight, perfectly bald, dressed in heavy trousers, a bright sports shirt with a necktie, and an old man's sweater-jacket, liver-colored and hanging straight to the knees.
The commas here enable you take in all of the character traits at
once, to absorb this person in one image, as you might do if meeting him in person. Notice also the varying of style here: both of these examples begin with short, comma-less sentences, and culminate in long, comma-laden sentences. Not only does this help to create contrast, to break up the rhythm and style, but it further demonstrates that the author's use of commas is deliberate.
"It is a safe statement that a gathering of commas (except on certain lawful occasions, as in a list) is a suspicious circumstance."
— H. W. and F. G. Fowler, The Kinq's English DANGER OF OVERUSE
The necessity of the comma causes writers to misuse it more than any other punctuation mark. The period is luckier in this respect, since it is appears less frequently and is less open to interpretation; the colon, semicolon, and dash are also lucky, as they can easily absent themselves from most works, and thus hide from heavy misuse. Yet the comma demands to be used—and used frequently— and this, together with the fact that it carries nebulous rules, makes it a prime target. And the main way writers misuse the comma is to overuse it.
If there is anything worse than a work bereft of commas, it is one drowning in them. "Any one who finds himself putting down several commas close to one another should reflect that he is making himself disagreeable, and question his conscience, as severely as we ought to do about disagreeable conduct in real life," said the Fowler brothers in The King's English in 1905. This might be a bit extreme, but their point is well taken.
Overusing commas can create many problems:
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