Tuesday, 1 April 2008

Punctuation, my dear, I don't give a damn. Or: Holy exclamation marks, Batman!!

Okay, so hands up on the hyphen front, but as lucky-winner-from-West-Sussex states, I'm not the only one. And Whiteley, I want the hyphen in time-piece put back in. The letter was written in 1943.

But can I just record for posterity, none of the exclamation marks in the book are mine. And there are 36 of them.

4 comments:

no said...

That can't be right! I don't do exclamation marks! Everyone knows that!

Alis said...

I have to stick up for Neil here - I scatter hyphens over my work so much it looks like there's been a hurricane through a hyphen-factory. Thought about putting an exclamation mark at the end of that sentence but, since Aliya doesn't do exclamation marks, decided against it...
That's another thing I do a lot, but more in blogs than books... ellipsis...

Tim Stretton said...

I'm with Alis on the ellipses - a tremendously economical device for leaving things unsaid...with three little dots (four is vulgar) you can appear debonair, carefree, sophisticated: the written equivalent of a raised eyebrow.

Exclamation marks, on the other hand, are puppies scampering round your ankles as you're trying to carry a cup of coffee. And if one is good, two or even three have to be much better!!!

Ninjauthor said...

!?!!-!!!

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