Editorial: "The 5 Best Punctuation Marks in Literature"
This past January, over at Vulture (which is an online arm of New York Magazine), columnist Kathryn Schulz compiled a list of The 5 Best Punctuation Marks in Literature. I'm partial to punctuation myself, especially the semicolon, so I was curious about which marks Schulz favored. It turns out that her list wasn't exactly what I had imagined.
Schulz wasn't explaining why the parentheses, em dash, ellipsis, colon, and period are superior to the question mark, brackets, and the rest (including my semicolon). Instead, she presents five passages from literature that feature uses of punctuation that impress her as particularly effective. Works by Vladimir Nabokov, George Eliot, T.S. Eliot, Charles Dickens, and Primo Levi are the sources for the snippets of writing presented to show exemplary usage of her five chosen punctuation marks.
As I read through the texts, I found myself thinking that Schulz was actually presenting a mixed batch of concepts. All the passages are indeed striking examples of writing, but do they display the effects of the chosen punctuation marks in some particular way? To me, the Nabokov example's effect depends more on the writer's use of a terse yet devastating aside. The parentheses are merely the chosen method for setting off the blunt words. Likewise, the George Eliot passage better illustrates the writer's refreshing decision to leave the viewpoint of the character who has been, until that moment, the protagonist. The em dash is, again, merely the tool by which the change is signaled.
The ellipsis in the T.S. Eliot citation is more integral to the work, but as Schulz herself points out, "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock" is itself an elliptical poem that drifts from one theme to another and then returns, and in turn it contains several actual uses of the ellipsis. The period in the Primo Levi passage, on the other hand, goes beyond the status of a punctuation mark: in a decidedly "meta" turn, Levi steps out of the flow of his narrative to bring the period to the reader's attention as an example of the peripatetic nature of the atoms that make up the matter of the universe.
Only the Dickens quotation seems to truly exemplify Schulz's thesis. The choice of the colon in the opening line of A Christmas Carol was indeed a bold and intriguing decision that would make a reader who was more accustomed to the mark's usual role in a sentence sit up and take notice.
Overall the article is an intriguing look at how punctuation can be an important part of remarkable - and remarkably different - pieces of writing. It's proof that adroit use of punctuation alone is not going to improve your work: as in the Nabokov and George Eliot pieces, the word choice and sentence structure must carry a great deal of the weight as well. Note also that the ability to use punctuation effortlessly or unconventionally, like Dickens, is the result of understanding the basics of punctuation so that your unusual choice comes across as courageous rather than careless.
If you're looking to brush up on punctuation, check out our punctuation tag.