Fashionable punctuation!
So, the other day, possibly even yesterday, in fact, good ol' m_mcgregor added to his growing series of "Things Fanfic Should Stop Doing" with a rant about ellipses in fanfic.
You know what they are. Those ". . ." things that we all so love (even if not a damned one of you spaces them out properly *glares from her publication guide soapbox*). His point, to boil it down perhaps far too greatly, was that ellipses are over used to the point of absurdity and cliche, when they should hardly be used at all.
My first response, naturally, was that dear old M. had finally flipped his gourd and knew not of what he spoke. This was shortly followed by my second response, which was accepting that he might have some tiny little point in all that rant somewhere, but he was ultimately misguided.
My third and longest lasting response has been "Oh lord, he's right, and now I have to rewrite my spn_j2_bigbang fic."
Hello, my name is Bella, and I am an ellipsis abuser.
But, well, that's not actually the point of this little post. The point of it is this: in thinking over M.'s excellent point regarding ye olde dot-dot-dot, or occasional dot-dot-dot-dot, I was reminded of a similar rant I had at an author whose work I was beta-ing regarding semicolons (one which, admittedly, still rankles today, I mean, I linked the author to online Elements of Style, what more does the author want as proof of incorrect usage?). This got me thinking even more, and I remembered having to relearn how to use commas properly on my senior thesis in college (and am now the great comma splice enforcer when I'm focused in enough on my grammar). And I realized that, maybe, just maybe, I was over using other "literary" devices, most especially italics for emphasis (you can really tell that you've gone over board on those when you're italicizing two words in a row and they're in two different clauses) and the M-dash (which no one -- no one -- in fanfic ever uses correctly -- except, naturally, for me. . . .)* which has started to replace parentheses, colons, and semicolons in my fiction.
So I start thinking about all these crimes against good writing and grammar, and I start to think about fanfiction in general and punctuation in particular, and I start to wonder how it is a perfectly well-educated individual like myself -- who if nothing else uses things like punctuation guidelines in her day-to-day work as well as having had to apply them with at least some degree of success in order to graduate college -- can get herself roped into these bizarre punctuation cliches.
And, well, I've come to a conclusion. And that is this:
* Do you like how I managed to get all three fashionable and over-used formatting and punctuation marks into that one parenthetical statement? I'm rather proud of it, myself.
You know what they are. Those ". . ." things that we all so love (even if not a damned one of you spaces them out properly *glares from her publication guide soapbox*). His point, to boil it down perhaps far too greatly, was that ellipses are over used to the point of absurdity and cliche, when they should hardly be used at all.
My first response, naturally, was that dear old M. had finally flipped his gourd and knew not of what he spoke. This was shortly followed by my second response, which was accepting that he might have some tiny little point in all that rant somewhere, but he was ultimately misguided.
My third and longest lasting response has been "Oh lord, he's right, and now I have to rewrite my spn_j2_bigbang fic."
Hello, my name is Bella, and I am an ellipsis abuser.
But, well, that's not actually the point of this little post. The point of it is this: in thinking over M.'s excellent point regarding ye olde dot-dot-dot, or occasional dot-dot-dot-dot, I was reminded of a similar rant I had at an author whose work I was beta-ing regarding semicolons (one which, admittedly, still rankles today, I mean, I linked the author to online Elements of Style, what more does the author want as proof of incorrect usage?). This got me thinking even more, and I remembered having to relearn how to use commas properly on my senior thesis in college (and am now the great comma splice enforcer when I'm focused in enough on my grammar). And I realized that, maybe, just maybe, I was over using other "literary" devices, most especially italics for emphasis (you can really tell that you've gone over board on those when you're italicizing two words in a row and they're in two different clauses) and the M-dash (which no one -- no one -- in fanfic ever uses correctly -- except, naturally, for me. . . .)* which has started to replace parentheses, colons, and semicolons in my fiction.
So I start thinking about all these crimes against good writing and grammar, and I start to think about fanfiction in general and punctuation in particular, and I start to wonder how it is a perfectly well-educated individual like myself -- who if nothing else uses things like punctuation guidelines in her day-to-day work as well as having had to apply them with at least some degree of success in order to graduate college -- can get herself roped into these bizarre punctuation cliches.
And, well, I've come to a conclusion. And that is this:
- I over use italics, ellipses, and dashes (M- or N-) because they are currently "in". I avoid using semicolons, colons, and to some extent, commas, because they are just SO four years ago.
* Do you like how I managed to get all three fashionable and over-used formatting and punctuation marks into that one parenthetical statement? I'm rather proud of it, myself.