As I mentioned in my last post, I was feeling a bit down in the mouth because I had to edit out much of the fancy punctuation when I prepared my novels for publication as ebooks. (By "fancy punctuation" I mean parentheses, colons, and semicolons). Apparently these mess with the electronic scanners or something like that. But, I suspect the other reason for omitting these fancy-pants punctuation marks is because they tend to mess up a reader's head.
My twenty-plus years of teaching composition have taught me that people don't understand colons and semicolons. When they run into one or the other they often feel a slight confusion, at best, or panic. Parentheses, on the other hand, are a little easier on the brain. But I had to remove all of them from my work. This meant no complex sentences, no compound-complex sentences; I couldn't use an anticipatory introductory phrase to introduce a sentence, either. And definitely no aside comments (personal or otherwise) imbedded anywhere in the text.
So what's left?
Commas. I can still do commas. But not too many of them. Too many mess up a reader's head.
Of course apostrophes are permitted. Why? Because they are absolutely necessary to comprehension.
And that brings me to the subject of my first punctuation posting: apostrophes really do matter and you should learn how to use them.
According to Lynne Truss (Eats, Shoots & Leaves) the apostrophe made its debut in English in the sixteenth century. Back then, it was used only to indicate omitted letters in a word: "don't" and "o'clock," for example. In Greek, the word apostrophe means "turning away" or "omission."
It wasn't until the seventeenth century that the apostrophe began to be used to indicate the possessive case. Today, the apostrophe's burden is a heavy one, serving no fewer than eight functions.
In my next posting, I'll begin to run through all eight. I welcome any good examples of proper or improper use of the poor misunderstood apostrophe.
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