punctuation, grammar, spelling, capitalization and more!
First of all, I do spell the English way; I was in an English boarding school when I was twelve, thirteen and fourteen, and these are the years when spelling gets set. After I had been made to write h-o-n-o-u-r, for instance, a hundred times on the a blackboard several hundred times, it was almost impossible for me to spell it h-o-n-o-r. The English use t-o-w-a-r-d-s and we use t-o-w-a-r-d. I like to use them both, depending on the rhythm of the sentence and the letter which begins the following word; sometimes the s is needed; sometimes not; this is, I realize, rather erratic, and I can’t blame the copy editor who tries to talk me out of it. Then there’s grey which is English, and on very definite, bird-wing, ocean-wave color to me; and gray, which is American, and a flatter, more metallic color. Then there are the c and s words, such as practice or practise. About words like these I’m simply in a state of confusion than of aesthetic persuasion, as with grey or towards, and the copy editor can have his way. On the whole I tell the copy editor to go ahead and make the spelling American, but don’t much around with the punctuation. Madeleine L'Engle, A Circle of Quiet
This amuses me to no end, as similarly to Madeleine, I did not attend American schools. With a Croatian mother yearning to be out of the teensy town in the Blue Ridge Mountains of Virginia (which, to her, were not mountains, having grown up just south of the Alps, but hills) where my father’s side of the family is deeply rooted, and back in Europe. Not Croatia, because at the time it was still Yugoslavia, and communist.
But Germany was good, and so it was there that I attended school. I received no formal education in spelling or grammar in English. When I first wrote my stories, I punctuated at will and spelled with my brother’s dictionary by my side. Later, when we got a word processor, it would beep at me and suggest words I might *really* mean instead of the one I just typed. However, at one point I decided I needed to up the grade average on my report card and chose English as my foreign language in school. The English preference of choice in Germany is British English, and so I too run into the same spelling issues Madeleine encounters. Grey is a softer color than gray. The choice of adding or omitting the s at the end of toward is consciously made. And my commas? German punctuation is like everything else the German’s do: precise. The rules are explicit. The caveats and exceptions are sensible and explained in great detail. Each rule has a name. In grades 5-7 you learn them and memorise them, and if you don’t so help you! As a result, my punctuation in English a atrocious.
The most common rule to use of commas in English that I’ve come across is a solid, “Well ... usually when you pause? ... or when you take a breath is when you insert a comma.” You can imagine what this does to my inner Punctuation Police. But, the inner Punctuation Poet, however, is easily overruns the PPolice and gaily grabs the basket of commas and scatters them accordingly. And so, whichever unfortunate soul happens to be the first permitted access to any given manuscript I hand them can usually just grab it by a corner, shake, and have all the extraneous commas tumble to the ground.
However, ultimately, the commas are doing my bidding. The reader, aware of my comma condition and able to navigate them, can then read the text just as I intended it, with pauses for emphasis or tension, and silences, however brief. In that sense, it becomes like a play, albeit a play that runs the risk of having too much stage direction given by the playwright. The pleasure of discovering one's own interpretation of my text becomes threatened.
And yet, punctuation is another reason why I was so drawn to e.e. cummings’ poetry. He punctuates according to his own rules, but also as needed in his poetry to the point that he takes my breath away.
Which brings me to another point in writing and grammar. Capitalization. I have often thought that I need to write a treatise on grammar with a focus on capitalization. No one else need follow it but me. But it would be my excuse for not following the rules laid out in textbooks and writing manuals. Because really, as someone who politically sees herself as “from the Earth” but has a US passport, though her mother is a Croatian who spent most of her life as a Yugoslavian, and despite the fact that I was raised in Germany, where my brother’s mother is from, though he was born in Okinawa and . . . well you get the idea. My nuclear-family members’ heritage is diverse to say the least. My father is the most American though he himself is descended from British, Germanic, Nordic and Native American ancestry. A real American, of America and from everywhere. But before I go spouting off politically (more so than I already have) allow to finish my unfinished statement.
As someone who feels they are from everywhere, and legally from select few places they feel both tightly bound to and complete outsiders to, why should I conform to a single set of rules when it does not suit my needs as a writer? Give me my commas to insert liberally and rampantly, let me spell more so as one word and not two, because that one word implies more, so much more urgently, nevermind (there’s another!) that I grew up in the Land of Compound Words and capitalized nouns. Should my writing not be not only about the story I want to share and the information I wish to impart on the world, but a reflection of myself? And isn’t part of being a writer knowing the rules and knowing when to break them? And after having written for over two decades, and having earned numerous degrees assuring anyone concerned, that yes, I have learned how to write and write well, should I not by now have earned that right to cummings away in my own writing?
I may have to write that treatise sooner rather than later. And I imagine I will have to revisit and correct it many times. Ultimately, I foresee that I will also end up breaking every single rule put forth in it. And if I don’t, certainly my conspirators in my critique group and editors and the like, will.
This amuses me to no end, as similarly to Madeleine, I did not attend American schools. With a Croatian mother yearning to be out of the teensy town in the Blue Ridge Mountains of Virginia (which, to her, were not mountains, having grown up just south of the Alps, but hills) where my father’s side of the family is deeply rooted, and back in Europe. Not Croatia, because at the time it was still Yugoslavia, and communist.
But Germany was good, and so it was there that I attended school. I received no formal education in spelling or grammar in English. When I first wrote my stories, I punctuated at will and spelled with my brother’s dictionary by my side. Later, when we got a word processor, it would beep at me and suggest words I might *really* mean instead of the one I just typed. However, at one point I decided I needed to up the grade average on my report card and chose English as my foreign language in school. The English preference of choice in Germany is British English, and so I too run into the same spelling issues Madeleine encounters. Grey is a softer color than gray. The choice of adding or omitting the s at the end of toward is consciously made. And my commas? German punctuation is like everything else the German’s do: precise. The rules are explicit. The caveats and exceptions are sensible and explained in great detail. Each rule has a name. In grades 5-7 you learn them and memorise them, and if you don’t so help you! As a result, my punctuation in English a atrocious.
The most common rule to use of commas in English that I’ve come across is a solid, “Well ... usually when you pause? ... or when you take a breath is when you insert a comma.” You can imagine what this does to my inner Punctuation Police. But, the inner Punctuation Poet, however, is easily overruns the PPolice and gaily grabs the basket of commas and scatters them accordingly. And so, whichever unfortunate soul happens to be the first permitted access to any given manuscript I hand them can usually just grab it by a corner, shake, and have all the extraneous commas tumble to the ground.
However, ultimately, the commas are doing my bidding. The reader, aware of my comma condition and able to navigate them, can then read the text just as I intended it, with pauses for emphasis or tension, and silences, however brief. In that sense, it becomes like a play, albeit a play that runs the risk of having too much stage direction given by the playwright. The pleasure of discovering one's own interpretation of my text becomes threatened.
And yet, punctuation is another reason why I was so drawn to e.e. cummings’ poetry. He punctuates according to his own rules, but also as needed in his poetry to the point that he takes my breath away.
Which brings me to another point in writing and grammar. Capitalization. I have often thought that I need to write a treatise on grammar with a focus on capitalization. No one else need follow it but me. But it would be my excuse for not following the rules laid out in textbooks and writing manuals. Because really, as someone who politically sees herself as “from the Earth” but has a US passport, though her mother is a Croatian who spent most of her life as a Yugoslavian, and despite the fact that I was raised in Germany, where my brother’s mother is from, though he was born in Okinawa and . . . well you get the idea. My nuclear-family members’ heritage is diverse to say the least. My father is the most American though he himself is descended from British, Germanic, Nordic and Native American ancestry. A real American, of America and from everywhere. But before I go spouting off politically (more so than I already have) allow to finish my unfinished statement.
As someone who feels they are from everywhere, and legally from select few places they feel both tightly bound to and complete outsiders to, why should I conform to a single set of rules when it does not suit my needs as a writer? Give me my commas to insert liberally and rampantly, let me spell more so as one word and not two, because that one word implies more, so much more urgently, nevermind (there’s another!) that I grew up in the Land of Compound Words and capitalized nouns. Should my writing not be not only about the story I want to share and the information I wish to impart on the world, but a reflection of myself? And isn’t part of being a writer knowing the rules and knowing when to break them? And after having written for over two decades, and having earned numerous degrees assuring anyone concerned, that yes, I have learned how to write and write well, should I not by now have earned that right to cummings away in my own writing?
I may have to write that treatise sooner rather than later. And I imagine I will have to revisit and correct it many times. Ultimately, I foresee that I will also end up breaking every single rule put forth in it. And if I don’t, certainly my conspirators in my critique group and editors and the like, will.