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On Punctuation & Proper Spelling—Please Chime In

UserPost

3:29 PM
November 15, 2009


Jules

Member

posts 50

1

I feel that each individual has to make it their own personal choice, endeavor, and study to procure for themselves a good sense of and a firm hold on spelling & punctuation. 

What I recommend:

1) Get a good book that covers proper punctuation, style and grammar usage. Don't WIKI punctuation for the same reason that colleges discourage it's use—because WIKI is edited by persons who may not have credible sources for their entries. Educated people in this world take others more serious and treat them with higher initial respect when they speak proper, write proper, and spell proper. Learning to use commas, or how to avoid their overuse; or to insert a semicolon, em-dash, or ellipsis points (three not four or five), or when to put a period within quotes or after them will make you look good—and annoy editors less. . . and for goodness sake, please use some punctuation, at least periods. Ending a line in a poem without a period or comma can be acceptable and common practice by novice and pro alike if one is sure to begin the trailing line on a new line, not connected within one long line without any indication where to break the meter. 

2) Continue to devote yourself to correct spelling. When I read poems online I have a hard time giving a good rating to a poem with broken english and full of slang, gansta/rap, or the abbreviations too common to internet chat (or a poem which lacks any and all punctuation). “Poetic License” can get a person by to a degree; however it can easily become a crutch and an excuse. Intentional word errors will have more impact when used sparingly and contrasted with good form. If someone submitted to me a resume filled with these I could not view them as taught, or well educated. For me, I learned the value of laying off the spellcheck. Let spellcheck highlight spelling mistakes, but instead of letting spellcheck  correct your error and replace it, exercise your brain muscle by first trying to figure out where you went wrong. After you have thought your way through a trouble word in your vocabulary a number of times you will come to find when you look back that you are not any longer misspelling that word. I know this from my experience. It can also be a good practice to write poems on a word processor native to your home computer on which you can correct and perfect, and then transferring it to the web not in a rough draft form. We each must continue to learn proper spelling well after we leave entry level schools because, dispite what they may have taught you, there are no hard fast rules to english language with it's roots in so many distant languages—it's a mutt language and at one time spelling was more phonic than than rudimentary. So says the book Painless Spelling, —Mary Elizabeth Podhaizer

This is not an end all to this subject, yet I can guarantee that the higher in the chain of authoritative voice in the world of verse, the greater, and steadier the consensus; this includes the guy who matters when you submit it to be published.

My goal with this thread is only to encourage good form. Please chime in on this discussion. I hope this is helpful and informative. —Jules


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