on-writing-well

72 ON WRITING WELL
writer who believes in himself and in what he is saying. Don't
diminish that belief. Don't be kind of bold. Be bold.
PUNCTUATION.
These are brief thoughts on punctuation, in no way intended
as a primer. If you don't know how to punctuate—and many college
students still don't—get a grammar book.
The Period. There's not much to be said about the period
except that most writers don't reach it soon enough. If you find
yourself hopelessly mired in a long sentence, it's probably
because you're trying to make the sentence do more than it can
reasonably do—perhaps express two dissimilar thoughts. The
quickest way out is to break the long sentence into two short
sentences, or even three. There is no minimum length for a sentence
that's acceptable in the eyes of God. Among good writers
it is the short sentence that predominates, and don't tell me
about Norman Mailer—he's a genius. If you want to write long
sentences, be a genius. Or at least make sure that the sentence
is under control from beginning to end, in syntax and punctuation,
so that the reader knows where he is at every step of the
winding trail.
The Exclamation Point. Don't use it unless you must to
achieve a certain effect. It has a gushy aura, the breathless excitement
of a debutante commenting on an event that was exciting
only to her: "Daddy says I must have had too much champagne!"
"But honestly, I could have danced all night!" We have all suffered
more than our share of these sentences in which an exclamation
point knocks us over the head with how cute or wonderful something
was. Instead, construct your sentence so that the order of
the words will put the emphasis where you want it. Also resist
using an exclamation point to notify the reader that you are making
a joke or being ironic. "It never occurred to me that the water