The one about punctuation
Gather around the fire, friends. We’ve had a few chilly days in this old Londontown in which I dwell. I’m going to tell you a story of times gone by, of wrongs righted, and of writing as a confusion-plagued occupation,
Once upon a time, when I was still an English language student at university, I used to carry with me a bunch of punctuation marks. Some people are in the habit of travelling with pencil cases. Yours truly upgraded to a satchel in which parentheses, commas, and apostrophes mingled and made merry.
One day, a semicolon went missing. I only noticed its disappearance when drafting up a writing assignment. I realised I had two sentences, strong enough to stand on their own, that needed to be separate, but still linked together. The semicolon fitted the job description like a glove.
But it was gone.
I’ll be honest; I panicked. Often misunderstood, the semicolon is not everyone’s cup of tea. With the exception of grammar and writing teachers in higher education, most people give this humble punctuation mark the cold shoulder. Yet, where would we be without it?
For starters, look at the following sentence: I had a dinner party last night. I invited Andy, the artist; Audre, the poet; and Tracy, the singer. Hey, stop staring at me like that. It was my party and I invited whoever I wanted. It’s not my fault if Andy Warhol, Audre Lorde, and Tracy Chapman were available to come. What I would like you to notice instead, though, is that in the absence of the semicolon (let’s say that we replace it with just commas), we’d have six people and three would be nameless.
Semicolons matter.
I searched high and low for my trusted friend. I asked the other punctuation marks to keep an eye out just in case they spotted it. Perhaps, our semicolon had got caught up in a crowd of comma splices trying to be helpful.
This episode came to mind when I was writing my book, Cuban, Immigrant, and Londoner, because few writers are grammarians, or punctuation experts. I’m lucky to have studied English but even I struggle sometimes with where to place a full stop when using quotation marks (inside the quotation marks, by the way).
It was always my intention to write my book in English. First off, it was a way to show my love for a language I had adopted at a young age and had helped me navigate many tough periods in my life. Secondly, expressing my thoughts in a foreign language helped me keep a neutral tone and a practical approach to the three overarching themes the book focused on: life and culture in the UK, my relationship with the English language, and writing from a non-native speaker’s point of view.
The semicolon turned up all fresh and rejuvenated a couple of days after. It just needed a break because it had been feeling burnt out. Fancy that, exclaimed an irate full stop. What if I tried to pull off the same trick? Some of us work longer hours than you, pal!
You can always rely on the Oxford comma to bring disputes to a quick end with no bad blood between the arguing factions. That’s exactly what it did. Maybe because of its rarity, the Oxford in its name, or its senior-looking demeanour, this comma’s words were listened to and taken on board. The confrontation ended amicably.
It made the student-cum-writer in me appreciate my punctuation marks more. To the point that I included unofficial arbiter-in-chief, the Oxford comma, in the title of my book. Now, all of you, back in the satchel, will ya?
Cuban, Immigrant, and Londoner, on sale now.