Punctuation – TS Hottle Editing

Elmore Leonard once said of exclamation points, “You are allowed no more than three per 100,000 words.”

I shrugged that one off when I read it, because that was Elmore Leonard‘s rules for writing. But it was always in the back of my mind. If I saw a “!” in my own writing, it’s life expectancy would be very short. (“Very” is another writing tic I’ve talked about before. Like everything else, it’s here because it works.) If I see it in editing, with one exception, I usually will flag it and tell the writer to take it down a notch.

But while Elmore disdained the !, one must remember it was how he wrote. He also had a Stephen King-like disdain for adverbs. Unlike Steve, Elmore actually stuck to it. I’m getting King’s Never Flinch when it comes out, so I may do an adverb count. But while I don’t share Elmore’s contempt for the !, I do get it.

For starters, with one very notable exception (Hi, Nathan!), I will mercilessly zap all instances of “!!” or “!?” Also, unless it’s for effect, it should be clear a character is shouting without putting an exclamation point at the end of every line of dialog the character speaks. Remember, someone has to read this, and as always, if it annoys the reader, your book is a DNF, a cute little abbreviation for “Did not finish.” (StoryGraph, an alternative for Goodreads, even has a status for this in addition to Want to Read, Reading, and Read. Bezos, you own Goodreads. Take note.)

But what was that other thing I just did? “!?” That, my friends, is the much maligned interrobang, which has long since been replaced by the acronym “WTF,” often spelled out or replaced with a similar phrase. There’s even a symbol for it with two html codes to render it. ‽ That might be hard to see with this font, so here’s an image from compart.com explaining the technical details:

The interrobang

If “WTF” were punctuation, this is what it would look like. But the interrobang never really caught on, mainly because it’s a comic book construction. Now, comics and graphic novels have their own rules, just like 73X7ing, lol. In prose, this really doesn’t quite cut it. But whoever came up with the interrobang deserves credit for trying. Still, readers find it distracting. The question mark (?) isn’t as scrutinized because we only use them to ask a question. In fact, they’re missed more than overused because some questions are not asked with the pitch of the voice going up. If, like me and a lot of other writers, you “hear” what you write, then a question (almost always in dialog) asked with a voice drop tells another part of your brain, “Hey, this is a period at the end.” I put in more question marks than I take out.

The !, or bang as it’s been called since the early days of computer programming, has a bad reputation because it gets abused. Like semicolons and em dashes*, they can get distracting. The former is because they’re so seldom used and often are more associated with computer code. Java and C# (and SQL, though I refuse to use them in SQL) use semicolons to end commands. Em dashes are a Gen X and Millennial tick, which has resulted in ChatGPT getting a migraine when users tell it to STOP USING SO MANY EM DASHES! I wont’ get into the ethics of how ChatGPT learns, but suffice it to say, we GenXrs and Millennials are baking our bad habits into cyberspace.

Normally, I have rules applied mainly to crutch words: One instance per page unless unavoidable. (“Just” is a nuisance word and hard to weed out as I end up putting back a third of what I cut.) For the exclamation point, I’ll restrict that even more. First, memorize Leonard’s rule: one bang per 100,000 words. And when you or your publisher send me your manuscript, understand, while I may be more lenient than Elmore Leonard, I still restrict it to one per chapter. Maybe one every three, since short chapters are the norm now.

*You can have my em dash when you pry it from my cold, dead–and lifeless–hand.

An apostrophe Thanks to clickbait and social media, use of the apostrophe (or “sky comma”) is a lost art. The most common (and often ridiculed) error is, of course, your/you’re. When you’re typing at a million miles an hour and want the words down, it’s easy to “hear” a word and pick the wrong spelling. For all the jokes about your/you’re, it’s something a ninth grader doing a proofread of your manuscript can spot. Assuming that ninth grader doesn’t believe texting should be the basis of grammar. Spoiler alert: It shouldn’t. k thx bye!

For the most part, people get contractions right. “He’s,” “they’re,” and “can’t” are all common examples. Frequently, I do see the apostrophe left out of “can’t.” In a manuscript, I’ll flag it. That’s what I get paid to do, among other things. Reading it, it’s not the most egregious apostrophe error out there.

Where do we get it wrong? Possessives. People can’t seem to wrap their head around when an apostrophe should or should not use it to denote possession. After all, we use his/her/their for third person possession. Where’s the apostrophe? Pronouns, aside from being the most monumentally stupid thing for politicians to whine about, are their own thing with their own rules. No formal name or specific noun denotes the possessor. Except…

There’s that pesky pronoun “It.” “It’s” is not possessive but rather a contraction for “It is.” When, as a pronoun, “It” possesses something, then you write “its,” no apostrophe. The easiest way to remember it is pronouns don’t use apostrophes for possession: Mine, our, your, his, her, their, and its.

Now, let’s talk about where people really grind my gears: Slapping an apostrophe in to indicate plural or omitting it to indicate possession. STOP DOING THAT!!! You know I’m worked up about that if I use three exclamation points after a sentence. That, in and of itself, is extremely bad grammar. So hopefully, I made my point.

Every so often, I’ll see a sign as I’m driving along or even online where someone wrote something along the lines of “Drink’s and Sandwich’s.” One had it as “Johnnys Bar.”

If you needed more proof civilization is in decline, there it is. It’s “Johnny’s Bar” and “Drinks and Sandwiches.”

Worse, some people labor under the delusion that the apostrophe goes before every “s” at the end of a word, especially if it’s a plural. STOP DOING THAT!!!

Now, the question on everyone’s mind once they realize how easy apostrophes are: What if a name or noun ends in an “s”?

Well, as we say in SQL Server work, “It depends.” This is one where the style guides vary wildly. Are we going to Charles’ house or Charles’s house? The Chicago Manual of Style says “Charles’s house” while the AP and various British guides suggest “Charles’ house.” Even Jess Zafarris and Rob Watts of the Words Unraveled YouTube channel can’t agree. Rob himself, a former BBC reporter now living in Germany, says he’s been forced to change with every style guide his work requires. And if it’s “Charles’s,” do you pronounce that second “s”?

Here is TS’s guide to the sky comma when it comes to nouns ending in “s.” It’s possessive, so use “‘s” at the end. However, it’s an S, followed by an S. You don’t have to say it out loud. This is what I learned in school, what a potential agent told me to use (I laid down the law on the Oxford comma, but she was in agreement it’s mandatory. Get over it.), and ultimately, what the Chicago Manual uses.