Chapter 23 sentence reading notes

Regarding punctuation, there are no exact rules to follow (Fowler, makes some general comments (given the complexities of English prose writing, he does his best (e.g., he points out that we can only have four kinds of pauses) (commas, semicolons, colons, and periods (question marks and exclamation marks are not, strictly speaking, pauses; they are indicators of tone (strangely enough, the Greeks used semicolons for question marks (thus, reading a plain Greek When asking a question, I get a weird feeling: "Why are you crying;" (instead of "Why are you crying?" (Of course, there are parentheses (this is indeed a kind of punctuation that makes the whole thing more complicated notation, because you have to count how many opening brackets there are in order to definitely use the same number of closing brackets (but if the brackets are dropped and there are only those four pauses, we have a lot more flexibility than trying to isolate all phrases with physical barriers , other sentences can use rich meaning levels (in the latter case, on the one hand, the meaning we want to express may achieve more precision and accuracy, and at the same time, it will lose the essential characteristics of language, that is, its Brilliant ambiguity))))))))))).

The comma is the most useful and best used of all pauses.When writing, it is very important to place the comma in the proper place.If you try to go back after you've written a paragraph and put them where they tempted you to put them, you'll find them swarming like little minnows into all kinds of crevices you didn't realize were there before. Before you can react, the whole sentence becomes lifeless, tied up horizontally and vertically by commas, making a hopeless struggle.It is best to use it as sparingly as possible, and use it emotionally, only when every comma needs to be brought out accurately, and it is a good sentence if it is used well.

In recent years, I've become more and more fond of using semicolons.The semicolon tells you that the complete sentence you just wrote is negotiable; that something needs to be added; sometimes, it reminds you of that Greek usage.It's almost always happier to encounter a semicolon than a period.The full stop tells you that's it; if you don't get the meaning you need or expect, you've got everything the author intended to package and send anyway, and now you have to read on.But for a semicolon, you have a small sense of anticipation; there will be others to come; read on; things will become clearer.

Colons are much less attractive, for the following reasons: one, they give you the feeling of being called around, or at least being led by the nose in one direction, and you probably don't want to go in that direction.Second, you suspect that you are involved in that kind of sentence, which is numbered to list some arguments: first, second, etc., which implies that if you are not numbered like this, you are not smart enough Follow the train of thought with these ideas.Also, many writers use this system casually and incompletely.At first it was the first point and the second point, it seemed to be counting on your fingers, and then, it went on and on, without a series of signs that you had been led to expect, which made you fumble around in a panic, looking for There should be a ninth or seventeenth point but there is no.

The exclamation point is the most annoying punctuation mark.Look!They said, look what I just said!How strange my thoughts are!It's like being forced to watch someone else's little one jump up and down frantically in the middle of the living room, yelling for attention.If a sentence really has something important to say, something quite worth mentioning, then there is no need to point it out with a sign.And if it turns out to be a banal sentence that needs some zing, the exclamation point only emphasizes its banality! Quotes should be used honestly and sparingly, only when there are real quotes at hand, and words enclosed in quotes must be scrutinized.If you want to quote, you must quote the exact words.If a part must be omitted due to space constraints, the rule is to insert three dots to indicate the omission.But it would be unethical to deliberately link ideas that the original author did not intend to link.Above all, quotation marks should be used for thoughts that you don't want to own, so to speak, that come out of thin air.Nor should they be placed around a cliché; if you want to use a cliché, you should do so on your own, and not try to assign the impostor to some unknown author or society.The misuse of quotation marks that most needs to be objected to, but which illustrates the dangers of misuse of quotation marks in prose writing in general, is seen in advertisements, especially for small restaurants, such as, "Just Around the Corner," or "Dining good place to go".No one who can be identified to quote actually said "just around the corner", let alone "great place to eat".It's most unlikely that anyone would say that about a restaurant using this style.

The dash is a handy tool, more casual, and basically a game, telling you that you're about to turn to a different course, but somehow connected to the current route - you just have to remember that the dash is there , you either have to add a dash after the idea to let the reader know he's back on the line, or end the sentence, as here, with a period. Using punctuation, the greatest danger is in poetry.Here, use commas and periods as sparingly and stingily as words.Any punctuation that seems to carry a subtle meaning in itself, like dashes and dots, or even semicolons and question marks, should be left out entirely.They should not be inserted and blocked by vague meanings.Exclamation points are especially not available.No matter what a poem says, a single exclamation point is enough to destroy the whole work.

TS Eliot's poems, especially in "Four Quartets," are the semicolons that I love the most.You can't hear them, but they are there, showing the connection between image and thought.Sometimes you catch a glimpse of a semicolon approaching, a few lines away, like climbing a steep flight of steps in the woods and seeing a bench not far ahead at a bend where you can count on taking a breather and breathing. Tone. Commas don't do that; they just tell you how the different parts of a complex thought fit together, but you can't stop, or even catch your breath, just because of the comma.