Lessons on Writing Effective Sentences Part VI: -...

Lessons on Writing Effective Sentences Part VI:

Lessons on Writing Effective Sentences Part VII:

Punctuation for Effect (the Dash, Semicolon, and Colon)

Instruction

In the last lesson we looked at the different rhetorical effects produced by the comma. In this lesson we will review the effects of the dash, the semicolon, and the colon.

The Dash

You make a dash with two hyphens (--). Dashes are used to set off information in a more dramatic way than the comma.

Dashes can rename, repeat, specify, or amplify what has already been said:

Our spirits are corroded by living in an atmosphere of unrelenting contentionan argument culture. (Deborah Tannen)

What we usually call the laws of naturethe way weather works on a tree for examplemay not really be laws in the strict sense, but only in a manner of speaking. (C.S. Lewis)

They can be used to set off appositivesnouns or noun phrases that rename or add details to a nearby word:

When a couple gets married, the bride very quicklysometimes right after her new husband passes out in their honeymoon-suite hot tubstarts composing personalized notes thanking their wedding guests for all the lovely gifts. (Dave Barry)

Medieval illustrations show people in every other human activitymaking love and dying, sleeping and eating, in bed and in the bath, praying, hunting, dancing, plowing, in games and in combat, trading, traveling, reading and writingyet so rarely with children as to raise the question: Why not? (Barbara Tuchman)

They can create dramatic shifts in tone or thought:

There is something brown and holy about the East; and California is white like washlines and emptyheadedat least thats what I thought then. (Jack Kerouac)

She got down the dusty box, opened the flaps, pulled out all the packing, carefully removed the antique vase, lifted it up to the lightand dropped it.

The Semicolon

The semicolon alerts the reader that you want to make a connection between two independent clauses, and you want the connection to be more intimate than the period.

Injustice is relatively easy to bear; what stings is justice. (H.L. Mencken)

Notice how the semicolon in the last example connects the two independent clauses in your mind; that connectivity is inferred by the semicolons shape: it has both a period and a comma, so it functions as a stop and a smooth transition.

Semicolons can provide clear relationships; therefore, they are often paired with coordinating conjunctions or conjunctive adverbs:

I was born a slave; but I never knew it till six years of happy childhood had passed away. (Harriet Jacobs)

Those who questioned creeds weakened authority, and might diminish the incomes, of Churchmen; moreover, they were thought to be undermining morality. (Bertrand Russell)

But they can also leave the work of inferring the relationship more to the reader; perhaps this effect creates intimacy between writer and reader:

Disrespect for federal authority did not lead to disrespect for property; on this count, the West was not wild. (Patricia Limerick)

The Colon

Think of a colon as a dramatic pause. I want to tell you something: and this is it!

The principle of the equality of human beings is not a description of an alleged actual equality among humans: it is a prescription of how we should treat human beings. (Peter Singer)

There is only one aim: always, at any given moment, to be different from what one is. (Hannah Arendt)

The girls parents took her everywhere: Paris, London, Hong Kong, Naples, and Bern.

The colon can also divide two independent clauses if the second clause summarizes or explains the first:

Unfortunately, success in school can often be determined by counting the toilets in a students house: the more toilets, the higher the socio-economic status and the higher the probability of success in school.

Exercises

1. Look at a passage of our own writing or the writing of a peer. How often does the writer use a dash, semicolon, or colon? What effect is the writer attempting?

2. Practice using the dash, semicolon, and/or colon in your own writing. Revise a passage of your writing by using all three punctuation marks at least once. Share your revisions with a peer or with the class and explain the rhetorical effect you are aiming for.