punctuation lessons

... another Important Thing

Thought punctuation was all about the commas and apostrophes? Think again. As I discovered today, there is a whole other world of punctuation out there that I was horrifically unaware of. The shame! THE SHAME! Oh, it’s horrible, it’s horrible. Not knowing this kind of USEFUL information meant that I would be more suited to giving tours of Machu Piccu than ‘reading’ English. When I lived in those dark times of Not Knowing How To Put A Line Into My Essay, I would have been better at pointing out historical archaeological details about a place that I had never been to than sitting down reading something that had been written in the 1700s by some guy with five slaves and 300 acres. Without even considering the question, To Put In Inverted Commas or Not To Put In Inverted Commas, I was blind to the real study of English. The Real Stuff.

But, all jokes aside, seriously.
Seriously. One day in front of the television and I’d learn what the weather was like in Turin. One day in an English class and I learn that when you use the dash (‘The Hyphen’), you must leave a space either side so that the lecturer correcting your essay won’t have an actual stroke. It transforms this sentence of made-up words that my lecturer likes to pontificate with, from this

Neutrally explicified-

To this:

Neutrally explicified –

I know. Totally different, right?

the questionable land of punctuation marks

Or, if you’re being a bit ‘alt’ about it, you can put the line in, and then, for some completely unknown reason, add in another line. Aha. So now it looks like this:

Neutrally explicified --

Now, I’m just learning, so that could be wrong. The point is - English lecturers are dainty. You have to watch them. You put a reference in the wrong place and they’ve drawn arrows and lines and squiggles, desperately attempting to understand WHY YOU WOULD DO THAT. You try to mix things up- bit of Wordsy in this paragraph, bit of Wordsy in that paragraph- and they break down in tears. Why are you talking about him again? they want to know. I thought we already discussed this! WHAT ARE YOU DOING? they yell. WHY ISN’T THERE A SPACE BEFORE THIS HYPHEN? These are, obviously, pressing concerns. Why there isn’t a space where there should be a space. Why there is a double space after one word when there should be just one space. Why there aren’t two spaces between each paragraph. Why this word isn’t in italics when it OBVIOUSLY SHOULD BE.
This is difficult stuff. This is what it means to be an academic.
Then, when they’ve stopped bitching about your spaces and your lack of spaces, they want to show off their knowledge. I say: ‘this echoes his relationship with education’, which is, presumably, a valid enough point. They take it further. They say: ‘or, it echoes HIS SOCIETY’S relationship with schooling’. Or it echoes his. Come on. This is what I think. ‘The author believes’ – or, ‘the author puts his faith in’. No. The author does not put his faith in. He believes. Dude. Does it really matter? And that’s where I’m wrong. Because, obviously, it does matter. It matters a lot.
So, I got my essay back, with its many, many, line-and-space related corrections, not to mention minute observations by my tutor about how YOUR READING OF THE TEXT DOESN’T SEEM TO BE WELL, YOU KNOW, DEEP ENOUGH. Because that’s what we English students are. We’re deep, man. Possibly without the man. We’re serious.
We’re deep.
We like our lines and spaces in the right kind of places.


Bon Blog. Dash.