C is for Catapostrophe

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Okay, in seriousness. There is some editing thing here and as much as I'd like to say it's the cat... it's probably not the cat. Back to the minor focus on edits and there is that little detail such as punctuation and when to use things in correct form, including the apostrophe. It can be an important factor in a sentence, so it's something that you'll want to make sure is done right throughout the story. The apostrophe can mean the omission of a letter or more, possession or make an item plural. All depends on the usage.

Cat-apostrophe

or....

Catastrophe

The big conflict in your story could be viewed as a catastrophe. Things have to go wrong, but they also have to be built up throughout your story. Even most surprises, if looking back later, readers will often find subtle clues that hint towards the bad times ahead. Making sure that the big bad moment is not only well lead up to but gives the reader the promises the story makes can be a major challenge for both rewrites and edits.

One is the nit-picky focus from this slightly joking topic. Going through and making sure every apostrophe is correct does take time and is something one does at the very last bit of editing because you don't want to be doing rewrites at that point. The final final minor edits is where you just fix the tiny things to try and make it the best possible. The other forum is well, all the things that go wrong at the climax of the story.

What do you think? Cat-apostrophe? or Catastrophe? Need another cat?

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E is for Exclamation

The use of exclamation marks in literature has me baffled as of recent. I have noticed them more in the unpublished stuff I read on Writing.com. I see them in entries in my contest and even more from young writers and new ones in general. I don't know if it's just me noticing them more now or if some writers are using them more. And I'm not talking about the few that use more than one at the end of a sentence. X.X

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The purpose of the exclamation mark:

An exclamation mark is a punctuation mark, and like the full stop (or period), it marks the end of a sentence. A sentence ending in an exclamation mark is either for exclamation (“Wow!”), to make a command (“Stop!”), or intended to show astonishment in a way (“They were the footprints of a gigantic hound!”). Often used in fiction writing in particular to add to the emotion of the words and/or the volume of them too.


In writing fiction:
I have been under the impression that in writing to use the exclamation mark as a form of punctuation sparingly. Which is why it has me confused when I start to see them used more in the writing I see online. It's almost as confusing as some writer's need to randomly use all caps for one word in a sentence. While I don't remember every single thing I've written over the past 7 years, I am certain that most of the work doesn't have very many uses of the exclamation mark. But I started to wonder if maybe it was just me.

For certain, there only needs to be one. The whole, "omg" with 20 exclamation marks might work for random posts on line or something (even annoying then) but if wanting to publish a story, try for one and some sort of way to show what is going on beyond using excessive punctuation.

There is a time and place for the exclamation mark but it's not something to fall on in lieu of showing the emotion, tension, inflection or whatever the punctuation would have been used to achieve. There are other options. So, I think I will stick with only using it on occasion.


A few sites that discuss this:
http://theperfectwrite.com/creative-fiction-writing-punctuation-never-to-use-the-exclamation-point/
http://knol.google.com/k/emily-sather/how-to-use-exclamation-marks-in-fiction/dz0pz35q5kxd/2#
http://www.writing-world.com/fiction/dialogue.shtml
http://www.writingforward.com/grammar/punctuation-marks/punctuation-marks-exclamation-mark


What do you think?
Are you for the exclamation mark or against using it often?