Know Your Punctuation!
, comma - the writer thinks you should take a break.
. period - the writer really thinks you should take a break.
... elipsis - a bunch of periods in a conga line.
; semi-colon - the writer wasn't entirely sure whether they wanted a comma or a colon, and asked Dr. Frankenstein to do something about that.
: colon - useful for grocery lists, and emoticons, but not a whole lot else.
- hyphen - when the protagonist's name needs to be incessantly long, or when nouns think they're adjectives.
! exclamation mark - the writer really really wants you to pay attention to this bit here!
? question mark - the writer is so indecisive, he's asking you.
() parenthesis - the writer doesn't think you'll pay attention to whatever's inside them (parenthesis are an excellent hiding place for nonsense).
[] brackets - the writer really doesn't think you'll pay attention to whatever's inside them [or doesn't want you to].
' apostrophe - the writer's lazy and doesn't feel like writing whole words, or somebody's getting grabby.
"" quotation - either the writer didn't write this, or he claims something along the lines of: "my characters write their own dialogue" or some such nonsense.
* asterisk - the writer doesn't think that word means what you think it does, or he knows you know exactly what you think it does, but doesn't want you to think so*.
*or he wants to go on a long tangent that doesn't take up any space whatsoever, so it's perfectly permissible to do so, and doesn't disrupt the flow of reading in any way, even though the reader is now following the massively rambling subscript tirade of the writer instead of the story. (Unless of course the story was a massively rambling tirade to begin with, then all that's changed is the font size.)
. period - the writer really thinks you should take a break.
... elipsis - a bunch of periods in a conga line.
; semi-colon - the writer wasn't entirely sure whether they wanted a comma or a colon, and asked Dr. Frankenstein to do something about that.
: colon - useful for grocery lists, and emoticons, but not a whole lot else.
- hyphen - when the protagonist's name needs to be incessantly long, or when nouns think they're adjectives.
! exclamation mark - the writer really really wants you to pay attention to this bit here!
? question mark - the writer is so indecisive, he's asking you.
() parenthesis - the writer doesn't think you'll pay attention to whatever's inside them (parenthesis are an excellent hiding place for nonsense).
[] brackets - the writer really doesn't think you'll pay attention to whatever's inside them [or doesn't want you to].
' apostrophe - the writer's lazy and doesn't feel like writing whole words, or somebody's getting grabby.
"" quotation - either the writer didn't write this, or he claims something along the lines of: "my characters write their own dialogue" or some such nonsense.
* asterisk - the writer doesn't think that word means what you think it does, or he knows you know exactly what you think it does, but doesn't want you to think so*.
*or he wants to go on a long tangent that doesn't take up any space whatsoever, so it's perfectly permissible to do so, and doesn't disrupt the flow of reading in any way, even though the reader is now following the massively rambling subscript tirade of the writer instead of the story. (Unless of course the story was a massively rambling tirade to begin with, then all that's changed is the font size.)
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