SECTION IV PUNCTUATION THE PICKWICK PAPERS Charles Dickens "Now," said Wardle, "what say you to an hour on the ice? You skate, of course, Winkle?" "Ye- yes; oh, yes"; replied Mr. Winkle. “I- am rather out of practice." “Oh, do skate, Mr. Winkle," said Arabella. "I like to see it so much." "Oh, it is so graceful," said another young lady. A third young lady said it was elegant, and a fourth expressed her opinion that it was "swanlike." "I should be very happy, I'm sure," said Mr. Winkle, reddening; "but I have no skates." This objection was at once overruled. Trundle had a couple of pair, and the fat boy announced that there were half a dozen more, down stairs; whereat Mr. Winkle expressed exquisite delight, and looked exquisitely uncomfortable. Old Wardle led the way to a pretty large sheet of ice; where Mr. Bob Saywer adjusted his skates with a dexterity which to Mr. Winkle was perfectly marvelous, and described circles with his left leg, and cut figures of eight; and inscribed upon the ice, without once stopping for breath, a great many other pleasant and astonishing devices, to the excessive satisfaction of Mr. Pickwick, Mr. Tupman, and the ladies; which reached a pitch of positive enthusiasm, when old Wardle and Benjamin Allen, assisted by the aforesaid Bob Sawyer, performed some mystic evolutions which they called a reel. Read the above passage as well as you can, observing carefully the punctuation. Read it again, ignoring the punctuation. Ask your class mates to tell you what differences there were between the two readings, in your intonations of voice and in their understanding of the selection. Punctuation can be heard and "felt " quite as distinctly as it can be seen. Its purpose is, to tell the reader how to group the ideas, how to modulate his voice for their proper expression, and how and when to pause. You and I unconsciously do all of these things when we read, but we may never have thought to give the credit to the commas, the semicolons, the periods, the exclamation and the interrogation points, the quotation marks. Ask yourself or your classmates just what influence each of the punctuation marks in the above passage had upon your voice. Take them up in order and discuss each one. Then compare the answers with the rules given below, and you will find that the two pretty nearly correspond. Punctuation is therefore a most important element in our writing and we should take great care to make it accurate. Over-punctuation is worse than insufficient punctuation. If we must err we should not err by punctuating too much. Probably the most attention is needed for the uses of the comma and the semicolon; few of us are likely to make mistakes in the use of the period, the exclamation point, or the interrogation point, for these are always, or nearly always, used at ends of sentences. It is the "mid-points" that are troublesome and that consequently receive the most extended treatment below. The Period (.) is used after abbreviations and at the close of declarative and most imperative sentences. If, however, an imperative sentence is exclamatory, the exclamation mark, not the period, is used. A row of three periods indicates that something has been omitted from the text: The Interrogation Point (?) is used after a direct question, not after an indirect one: Where are you going? "What have you been doing?" he asked. He asked what I had been doing. The Exclamation Point (!) is used after any expression of strong feeling, be it surprise, terror, grief, or any similar feeling : What a shame! Alas! Alas! Sublime! What shall I do! The Comma (,) is probably the most troublesome of punctuation marks, owing partly no doubt to its many uses. It is the mark of punctuation which groups words and phrases for our eye in order that we may adjust our voice and our mental grasp accordingly. It is used as follows: 1. To designate omissions in headings and the other formal parts of a letter, as has been pointed out in the section dealing with letter writing: 125 West Carlton St., N. Y., Jan. 4, 1912. 2. To indicate omissions of words in sentences: John had a black suit; Jim, a brown one. Scott is the author for my dreaming moods; Shakespeare, for my restless ones. 3. To facilitate the reading of long numbers: 9,184,268. 10,000,000. 89,163. 4. To separate quotations from the other parts of a sentence: "Perhaps," said John, "you will find the door unlocked when you reach home." 5. To mark off the nominative absolute or the noun of direct address from the rest of the sentence: The discovery having been made too late for publication, the papers could announce it only on their bulletins. John, where are you going? 6. To set off words, phrases, or clauses that anticipate their natural order: At the very beginning of the session, he was suddenly taken ill. Beneath, I found my hat. I hold that he who by act or word brings that principle into peril or disparagement, however honest his intentions may be, places himself in the position of one inflicting injury upon his own country and endangering the peace and all the most fundamental interests of Christian society. GLADSTONE'S Empire and Liberty. This use of the comma is rapidly losing ground except in those cases where the anticipating phrase or clause is of great length. 7. To separate words, phrases, or clauses that are explanatory or parenthetical: John, however, went the other way. James, the head boy in the school, has been ill for two days. Every one will come, I trust. The boys, on the other hand, remained at home. This book, in other words, made a way for itself before all others. I saw Joseph, who is my cousin, enter the shop. (If, however, the relative clause is restrictive, it is not set off by the comma. See page 569.) 8. To separate the coördinate clauses in a compound sentence if they are extremely long or if one makes a statement contrary to the other: He has an excellent record, but his report doesn't seem to show it. He achieved first of all a knowledge of the rudiments of the great historical movements, and later, the influence of their workings. 9. To separate the dependent from the independent clause, particularly when it is extremely long: I must hurry, for the mail has come and I am expecting a letter from home. I am open to your censure and will bear it, if I have overstepped the modesty I should have observed. He has always been successful in business, because he has put his very heart and soul into it. 10. To mark off a series of words, phrases, or short clauses in the same type of expression when they are not connected by conjunctions. This sentence is itself an illustration. (See also rule 3 under Semicolon, p. 511.) It is a dull, dark, melancholy day. John, James, and Bill were all there. (In such cases as this last, where and or another conjunction is used to connect the last two of a series, it is considered a little better to precede it with a comma.) |