Long prose, long sentences that reflect “on punctuation” in a way it doesn’t use punctuations. Words flow, it flows and you stagger sentences to make sense Clean and simplicity, texture of words and paper “There’s another trouble with meaning. We’ve been taught to believe it comes near the end. As if the job of all those sentences were to ferry us along to the place where meaning is enacted—to “the point,” Just before the conclusion, Which restates “the point.” This is especially true in the school model of writing. Remember the papers you wrote? Trying to save that one good idea till the very end? Hoping to create the illusion that it followed logically from the previous paragraphs? You were stalling until you had ten pages. Much of what’s taught under the name of expository writing could be called “The Anxiety of Sequence.” Its premise is this: To get where you’re going, you have to begin in just the right place And take the proper path, Which depends on knowing where you plan to conclude. This is like not knowing where to begin a journey Until you decide where you want it to end. Begin in the wrong place, make the wrong turn, And there’s no getting where you want to go. Why not begin where you already are?” ― Verlyn Klinkenborg, Several Short Sentences About Writing Juxtaposition of clean & messy Self-expressive Hierarchy of importance Airy Redundancy and repetition Book cover by Wangzhi Hong - Poetic Order “In school you learned to write as if the reader Were in constant danger of getting lost, A problem you were taught to solve not by writing clearly But by shackling your sentences and paragraphs together. Think about transitions. Remember how it goes? Late in the paragraph you prepare for the transition to the next paragraph— The great leap over the void, across that yawning indentation. You were taught the art of the flying trapeze, But not how to write.” ― Verlyn Klinkenborg, Several Short Sentences About Writing “We forget something fundamental as we read: Every sentence could have been otherwise but isn't. We can't see all the decisions that led to the final shape of the sentence. But we can see the residue of those decisions.” ― Verlyn Klinkenborg, Several Short Sentences About Writing
Exclamation points have been with us in their modern form for over 600 years, but several writers and commentators have warned that using them is more than a failure of style—it’s also a sign of bad taste, and maybe even poor character. “An exclamation point is like laughing at your own joke,” said F. Scott Fitzgerald. David Marsh, who edits the style guide for the British newspaper The Guardian, says something similar: when a newspaper uses an exclamation point in a headline, it invariably means, “Look, we’ve written something funny.” The physician and man of letters Lewis Thomas wrote that seeing exclamation points “is like being forced to watch someone else’s small child jumping up and down crazily in the center of the living room shouting to attract attention.” If a sentence has an important point to make, Thomas concluded, it doesn’t need a mark to point it out.
There are some punctuations that are interesting and there are some punctuations that are not. Let us begin with the punctuations that are not. Of these the one but the first and the most the completely most uninteresting is the question mark. The question mark is alright when it is all alone when it is used as a brand on cattle or when it could be used in decoration but connected with writing it is completely entirely completely uninteresting. It is evident that is you ask a question you ask a question but anybody who can read at all knows when a question is a question as it is written in writing. Therefore I ask you therefore wherefore should one use the question mark. Beside it does not in its form go with ordinary printing and so it pleases neither the eye nor the ear and it is therefore like a noun, just an unnecessary name of something. A question is a question, anybody can know that a question is a question and so why add to it the question mark when it is already there when the question is already there in the writing. Therefore I never could bring myself to use a question mark, I always found it positively revolting, and now very few do use it. Exclamation marks have the same difficulty and also quotation marks, they are unnecessary, they are ugly, they spoil the line of the writing or the printing and anyway what is the use, if you do not know that a question is a question what is the use of its being a question. The same thing is true of a quotation. When I first began writing I found it simply impossible to use question marks and quotation marks and exclamation points and now anybody sees it that way. Perhaps some day they will see it some other way but not at any rate anybody can and does see it that way...