Tuesday, July 21, 2015

more good tips


Finished " Between You and Me: Confessions of a Comma Queen" and remember it is rated R. It is worth reading 
and here are a few more tips:

- one chapter on pencils made me stop in Target today
and stare at the choices. I have never thought about good, good pencils besides the normal ones. I have thought about good erasers. Then  I bought pens on sale. Here is a website: Pencils. org 

- What piece of punctuation has the most gumption?
Is it an exclamation mark because it screams or packs a punch?

- "Punctuation is a deeply conservative club. It hardly ever admits a new member. In the 1960's , an ad man invented
the interrobang, a combined question and exclamation point, but it didn't catch." 

- "The interior punctuation that goes on in sentences is even more subtle. It's like a family-- we have built on the comma
and the period, and come up with pretty touchy characters, as well as with some snobs and some saintly family members who are ready for everything. For instance, the dash family." 

- " A sentence should have one colon just like a period."

- Learn to have word sense. 

- look up in a dictionary for where to put breaks in words
when moving to the next line ( a hyphen)

Favorite sentences: 

" It is better to fail in originality , than to succeed in imitation."  Melville

" And the women of New Bedford,  they bloom like their own red roses." Moby-Dick, Melville 

2 comments:

melissa said...

Ticonderoga black pencils at Target. Wonderful. The wood never splits when sharpened. See, I have a thing for a good pencil!

Bonnie said...

Thanks for the tip. I may start to use pencils more.
Of course, I love what you said about "wood" since your
husband is the wood guy!