For two years now I have worked as an opinion columnist for The Daily Evergreen, and every week when I turn in my column my editor scrutinizes my writing and tells me what I am doing wrong. As frustrating as it can be sometimes to see my column rearranged and torn apart by another person, it is helpful to see what specific things I can improve in my own writing.
One thing that I have learned from my editor is that I need to watch my usage of commas. In order to be printed in the newspaper, articles and columns need to be SO CLEAR-CUT, SO DIRECT, SO CLEAN AND PRECISE [series of adjectives connected with commas and no and's]. If sentences start running on then cut them in half; if descriptions are too elaborate then remove the decorative punctuation marks and excessive adjectives. Those are the rules of the game.
For example, one piece I turned into my editor included a sentence that originally contained four different commas. The sentence read, “However, with these new policies, students might be afraid to return back to their dorm room after a night of partying, in fear of being labeled as ‘at risk,’ and suffering the consequences.”
After my editor was done critiquing my piece, there were no commas left in that sentence. He explained that with newspaper columns, the reader should pause as few times as possible to avoid losing interest, so the sentences and ideas should flow easily without unnecessary interruptions.
While working at The Daily Evergreen has helped to improve my writing in many ways, it was also made me fairly hesitant to use a variety of punctuation in my writing. So, in addition to getting a handle on my comma usage and only including commas when it is necessary, I would like to work on employing other types of punctuation marks such as dashes, semicolons, parentheses and virgules in my writing.
It is obvious from the blog post I am writing right now that I essentially avoid using a variety of punctuation marks at all costs, seeing that the only punctuation marks regularly used in this post are periods and commas (but of course). Hey, parenthesis! I am making progress already.
My hopes are that this grammar course will teach me the proper usage of a wide range of punctuation marks so that I will feel confident enough to employ them in my own writing. The editors at The Daily Evergreen may have instilled a fear within me when it comes to using any kind of punctuation, but this class can help me to extinguish that irrational fear now.
Although a clean-cut writing style may be appropriate for newspaper articles and columns, I would like to feel confident enough in my grammar usage to be able to transition into different writing styles when called upon.
The last thing I want for my writing is for it to simply be IDEAS AND FACTS AND STATEMENTS [series of nouns connected with and and no commas] with no extra mechanics to set my writing style apart and engage the reader. I want my writing to be exciting to read, and I think including different punctuation marks will mix things up.
I hope that by the time I am writing my last blog post for this class I will have gained enough confidence and knowledge about proper grammar usage that my writing will include a variety of punctuation marks and will prove more interesting to read.
