RANTING TO MAKE A POINT

Okay, okay, I know punctuation is important.

(Even repeating the "okay," with commas after each "okay" in the previous sentence, makes the sentence read a certain way, both out loud and in our heads.)

As a playwright and as a playwriting teacher, I feel that the biggest help you can give an actor (aside from the thoughts and the specific words to express those thoughts) is the punctuation that helps the actor plan their delivery and their breathing. It is equivalent of the stops, the rests, the pauses one finds in musical notation. Punctuation very often signals your intent in a subtle, psychological way, which is preferable and requires no deep-seated analysis (and is preferable to giving instructions for every single inflection, which insults the interpretive artist). The best writing always comes when we write as we speak--it's how we create the purest communication with the most "character." It's how we get our points across and, hopefully, keeps our readers/audience involved.

But . . . did you notice how, in the previous paragraph, I put the period inside the quotes when I tastefully decided to describe the colors writing takes on as its character? Or the comma after the first "okay" in the second paragraph? The laws decreed by the "Punctuation Police" say that anytime you have a quote followed by punctuation, the punctuation mark must go inside the closing quotation mark. Now, frankly, that is just plain dumb! While I believe that a quote of someone's speech should end with a period just inside the quotation mark, when you flag an item for its particular meaning--ie., its "raison-d'etre," if you will--why should you have to blend it back into the sentence when psychologically you want it to stand apart?! (See, I had to do it again with raison-d'etre!) I must protest! I think (and feel) that punctuation should reflect the author's intent in both psychology and in meaning, and the "grammar police" must learn to think outside the box when it comes to quotation marks. (After all, parentheses have a grown up attitude--when separated from part of a sentence, they surround the parenthetical thought but the punctuation goes OUTSIDE the end parenthesis . . . unless the entire sentence is a parenthetical thought, in which case the whole thing including the punctuation mark is sandwiched between the two slices of bread! Like this!) But when you use quotation marks as a "highlight," (see!) you aren't really allowed to make that highlight standout because the comma brings you careening back to the rules of the sentence! I say, "Stand up for your rights, writers! Vote to use your quotes as best suits your purpose!" (See, now that's the way it should work!)

And don't get me started on punctuating lists of three-or-more items, where some idiots like Lorraine Turabian (did I mispell her name? Tough!) insist on putting a comma after the next-to-last item before the "and," as in "planes, trains, and automobiles" versus "planes, trains and automobiles." It's enough to make you SCREAM!!!

On the other hand, I love elipses . . . !

This silliness was paid for by the Emmanuel Rant Society!