We hold these truths…but they’re not always as self-evident as you’d think.
Professional writing holds a number of truths that sometimes receive a mere nod rather than being adopted as habit, developed as practice, and sustained until the Chicago Manual of Style tells us differently.
Agents and editors looking at queries or proposals can note a number of curiosities that “mark” the writing as Old School versus Up-to-Date.
Truth 1 (note, not in order of importance, necessarily):
Accepted practice is one space between sentences.
If you have yet to conquer the one space between sentences rather than the Old School two spaces we were taught before computers were invented, devote part of this week to mastering the habit. It’s true (no pun intended) that it may take no more than a week of intentionality to break the habit of hitting the space bar twice at the end of a sentence. Once you do, you will graduate forever from Old School and earn your Up-to-Date Writer certificate.
Not a big deal, you think? Agents and editors inadvertently tense when they see two spaces between sentences, no matter how good the writing. It won’t necessarily make them turn down the project, since it’s correctable. But it plants a subconscious question about what else the author might not be aware of regarding current publishing expectations.
Truth 2:
Semi-colons and colons have gone the way of typewriter ribbons and correcto-tape.Β
Except in academic work, semi-colons and colons have far fewer usages than imagined, despite how cute they look in emojis. For a variety of reasons, today’s writer needs the Costco size of period and question mark punctuation, a moderate size batch of commas, and a package of semi-colons, colons, and exclamation points that resembles your home supply of saffron threads.
Readability is one factor that contributed to the demise of semi-colons. Especially in fiction, but also true in nonfiction, readers see a period as a rolling stop, a comma as a brief pause, and a semi-colon as a conundrum. “What am I supposed to do with this? That looks like two sentences, doesn’t it? But they’re joined. Or does one half explain the other?” And that is all the hitch the reader needed to get drawn out of the story to think about the punctuation.
Opt instead for shorter, but meaningful sentences. If you adore semi-colons, practice with a section of your work. See how else you could word that passage without the flag-waving semi-colon. It may take no more than a simple period (and you already have the giant economy size of that).
Truth 3:
Yes, colons work for making lists and sideways smiley faces. π
Truth 4:
Block writing–left justified with double spaces between paragraphs–is reserved almost exclusively for web writing. It’s the domain of blogs and social media posts.
When writing for books or articles, indent the first line (by setting your default, typically to 0.5), and add no extra space between paragraphs.
In your proposal, the guts of the proposal will be single-spaced and the sample chapters will be double-spaced between lines (by default, not the computer equivalent of a carriage return, for those who remember the term), but with no additional double-space between paragraphs.
Truth 5:
You may live in a country that adds a “u” to the word color and flavor, but you are submitting your work to publishing houses and audiences (primarily) that dropped the extra letters too many years ago to count. Write with abandon. But before submitting to a U.S. agent or editor, go back through and neutralize spellings that mark the work by country rather than content.
Exceptions exist.
Truth 6:
Some writers believe they can’t break these long-ingrained habits.
Truth 7:
Untrue. Those same writers somehow adapted to the idea of clicking a remote rather than getting out of the chair to change the TV channel. We won’t even bring up the idea of telling Alexa to turn the channel for you.
Even if you are locked into one of the above writer habits, take courage. You can conquer the habit. And if you do, you will position yourself in a better light with agents and editors.
Truth 8:
Agents and editors are lovely people…for the most part. And we recognize the value of forgiveness. In fact, we count on it!
Robin Patchen
I love this list. As a freelance editor, I explain the issues above often to new writers. As you say, most can be changed pretty easily. But they mark the writer as an amateur, which is never the goal when seeking representation and publication.
Cynthia Ruchti
Another big truth. Thanks.
Andrew Budek-Schmeisser
The semicolon has a place,
and in my toolbox yet remains
to add a smooth ascendung grace
to the sonnet’s three quatrains;
it’s tempting for each four line verse
to become a single sentence,
but this is a beginner’ curse,
a bland sing-song-y menace
that turns what should be upward flow
into a flight of clomping stairs
that lets the seasoned reader know
(he could not be unawares!)
that at banishment of semicolon
the poem at its first gate is fallen.
Andrew Budek-Schmeisser
‘Ascending’, not ‘ascendung’, which in itself actually does have a nice Wagnerian ring to it…
Cynthia Ruchti
Doesn’t it, though?
DAMON J GRAY
Cynthia, this was a delightful blog posting. You teach with such grace. I smiled all the way through. Thank you for sharing.
Cynthia Ruchti
Glad it’s helpful, Damon.
Katherine Talbert Phillips
Boy, I enjoyed this piece! As an old English teacher, I felt it my duty to insert the lovely semi-colon into my writing. It is nice to see the most recent set of “Truths” all in one place. Plus, the ending really made me smile. Thanks for this post!
Cynthia Ruchti
Good to hear from teachers, Katherine!
Jeanne Takenaka
Cynthia, this post had me nodding my head and smiling. When I first started writing, I had to break the two-space-between-sentences habit. Though I’m golden with the habit now, I still use Find and Replace to check for any stray spaces between sentences.
Cynthia Ruchti
It’s so easy for it to happen, isn’t it?
Mary A. Felkins
Hilarious and helpful! Thankful the collection of semicolons and colons ought to equal my collection of saffron threads. Which is, to date, zero.
Cynthia Ruchti
Couldn’t resist the saffron analogy!
Kristen Joy Wilks
Ha ha! What you said about semi-colons and colons is so funny. I never used them, in my nearly twenty years of writing. I would always use commas or a new sentence or very rarely in a weird list situation. But over the last month or so, I’ve been painstakingly teaching myself to use them. They still confuse me. Yay! I can give up!!! Back to my beloved commas, wahoo! Although, I would like to master breaking up a list mid-sentence from a simple pause. Which semi-colons appear to be the way to do that, if I could just get the hang of it.
Cynthia Ruchti
In fiction, if you’re making a list that could be confusing, use a sentence fragment.
She’d seen it all. Fights. Brawls. Disputes. Debates. But she’d never seen anything like this. The grade school playground was in chaos.
If writing nonfiction, consider using semi-colons sparingly if at all. If you do, choose a method like:
Four hundred years of waiting for help; for someone to care; for a word, a voice, or a sign; for light to dawn, rise, break, or whatever light does when it finally shows up.
But even that sentence can be written more “readably”–and communicating clearly is our ultimate goal–with something like this:
Four hundred years of waiting for help. Waiting for someone to care. Waiting for a word, a voice, a sign. For light to dawn, rise, break, or whatever light does when it finally shows up.
The sentence fragments here are clear to understand, so they’re acceptable in most editors’ minds.
Kristen Joy Wilks
Yes!!! Sentence fragments I can do. I use these more naturally than semi-colons but have been told to use a semi-colon instead. Boy, whoever changed these rules is truly my friend! Thank you Cynthia for the clarification and I love seeing the usage of the comma and semi-colon together for reference. That’s so helpful.
Cynthia Ruchti
And overuse of any punctuation technique can grow tiresome. Lots of lists. Repeated groups of three that aren’t intentional. Ellipses. Oh! We should tackle ellipses soon!
Deena Adams
Thanks for this post, Cynthia. When I entered the fiction writing world two years ago I had no idea about the one space between sentences change, and it took a while to get out of the double-space habit.
Another punctuation change I’ve noticed in recent published novels is a new paragraph start with the same speaker from the previous paragraph. The new paragraph opens with quotation marks, but the previous paragraph has no closing quotation marks. At first, I thought it was missed in the editing process but the more I saw it, the more I realized it was on purpose. I have yet to implement this one in my writing. LOL
Cynthia Ruchti
Glad you brought this up! As you’ve seen, this technique is legit, but it fails in one important way–it can draw attention to itself and make the reader stop long enough to wonder if that’s correct or not.
Knowing WHO is speaking is so vital to good dialogue in fiction that I hold to a different premise. Monologues don’t belong in fiction (except in rare instances…like talking to a dead person who can’t answer back, but even then…).
Rather than continue a single speaker’s train of dialogue to yet another paragraph, instead introduce an action beat, or reveal some kind of response from the hearer, even if it’s silent.
For instance:
Harold slapped his thigh and said, “I’ve never seen anything like it. Here she was riding that bull as if it belonged to her mama, not a care in the world for the fact that he outweighed her by a good four pounds. I kept waiting for that woman to plant herself in the mud and wail for that mama to come runnin’. But that was before I thought it through.
“She wasn’t going to let go no way no how. She had a grip on that rope that wouldn’t choked a fire-breathing dragon and made him swallow his gum, I’m tellin’ you. It didn’t matter how many of us took to flagging her down and pointing to the safety of the fence.
“No, siree. That woman kept one hand on her hat–a frilly thing with lace and all whatnot–and kept riding until the poor beast got done tuckered out. Then she slid offa the animal, brushed her palms like she done a good day’s work, and slapped the bull on his rear as she turned to walk away. Paul Bunyan got nothin’ on that woman.”
Try instead:
Harold slapped his thigh and said, “I’ve never seen anything like it. Here she was riding that bull as if it belonged to her mama, not a care in the world for the fact that he outweighed her by a good four pounds. I kept waiting for that woman to plant herself in the mud and wail for that mama to come runnin’. But that was before I thought it through.”
He drove his fingers into his temples as if he had to think it through again while telling me.
“She wasn’t going to let go no way no how,” he said. “She had a grip on that rope that wouldn’t choked a fire-breathing dragon and made him swallow his gum, I’m tellin’ you. It didn’t matter how many of us took to flagging her down and pointing to the safety of the fence.”
His breath came faster now, the words pounding the air like the bull’s hooves on dirt. “No, siree. That woman kept one hand on her hat–a frilly thing with lace and all whatnot–and kept riding until the poor beast got done tuckered out. Then she slid offa the animal, brushed her palms like she done a good day’s work, and slapped the bull on his rear as she turned to walk away. Paul Bunyan got nothin’ on that woman.”
The addition of the action beats enhances the scene, rather than stopping the flow.
In real conversations, even with a long-winded storyteller, the listener almost always interjects something, even if it’s simply, “Do tell,” she said.
Cynthia Ruchti
You’ll note in the above that the indentations I made for new paragraphs didn’t come through. But you’ll get the picture.
Deena Adams
Thanks for your example, Cynthia. This is exactly what I’ve done in my writing to avoid the new paragraph with no closed quotations marks on the previous paragraph. I’m encouraged to hear I’m doing something right. π
Robin W. Pearson
Iβve also noticed the comma before βtooβ going the way of the semi-colon. As an honor graduate of the old school, I yet cling to both. ????
Cynthia Ruchti
Good point, Robin.
David Todd
I’ve noticed lately, in non-fiction, a tendency to go block paragraphs, blank line between paragraphs, text left justified/ragged right. I like that. Even spacing of letters is easier to read than the variable spacing you get with full justification. I suppose I like it in part because that’s how I do my non-fiction books.
Cynthia Ruchti
Many writers instinctively think that full justification (even edges on the right as well as the left) is more “professional looking,” and some publishers do prefer that. But you’re right, if you ask me. The even spacing is easier on the eyes and less likely to cause confusion or appear like a typo.
Amy L Harden
Thank you for these much-needed writing truths. Is there any wisdom on the use of the hyphen?
Cynthia Ruchti
Hyphens give some of us the hives! Because as with most of these punctuation guidelines, each publishing house follows a basic core like the Chicago Manual of Style, but then has their own particular guidelines as well.
In what sense are you curious about hyphens? What usage?
One that often trips us up is age.
The sixteen-year-old boy took a step closer to the curb.
The boy stepping closer to the curb was sixteen years old.
Some writers struggle with using hyphens in both places. But the first usage of hyphens is correct. And the second sentence–without them–is also correct, because in the first example sixteen-year-old is a modifier of boy. In the second it’s a statement of his age.
Jamie Chavez
THANK YOU.
However, every time I’ve ever talked about double spacing after a period I’ve been yelled at, so good luck to you. π
Cynthia Ruchti
Thanks for the heads up, Jamie! π
Judith Robl
Thank you, thank you, thank you! It may take some of us a little extra time to break the two space habit (for me it was about a year and a half), but observing these practices is the mark of the professional. We’re never too old to learn.
Susan Brehmer
We could all use more space in our lives. Nice to know we can borrow it from the page.