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Punctuation & “White Space:” The Rhythm Section of Your Writing!
Let your stories sing
Punctuation and white space help your readers know when to speed up, slow down, and when to stop reading. When you master the art of proper punctuation, and it IS an art, you become an orchestra conductor who alters the tempo of your writing: Allegro — Read faster; Adagio — Slow down; Caesura — Stop!
These 5 teensy-weensy marks signal your reader to slooooow down:
, Comma🚶🏽➡️🚶🏽➡️slow down
… Ellipse 🚶🏽➡️🚶🏽➡️slow down
— Endash 🚶🏽➡️🚶🏽➡️slow down
– Hyphen 🚶🏽➡️🚶🏽➡️slow down
(parenthetical text) Parentheses🚶🏽➡️🚶🏽➡️slow down
And your readers will stop when you insert these 4 little beauties:
: Colon 🛑 stop
! Exclamation mark🛑stop
. Period/end-stop 🛑 stop
; Semicolon 🛑 stop
Ditch punctuation entirely and write a run-on sentence for a quick sprint down the page. Virginia Woolf wrote in her novel, Mrs. Dalloway:
The violent explosion which made Mrs. Dalloway jump and Miss Pym
go to the window and apologise came from a motor car which had
drawn to…
