The Rules of Writing & What Really Matters

Many of those so-called grammar and punctuation rules that people are pushing in online forums are not really rules at all.

Singular they

If writers are not debating (or sharing memes) about the serial comma or the number of spaces after a period in online discussions, they’re often railing against the use of the “singular they” in modern usage. “Somebody used the milk, and they didn’t put it back in the refrigerator” should be written, they say: “Somebody used the milk and he or she didn’t put it back in the refrigerator.”

The former, the finger waggers will tell you — even though it is less awkward and perfectly understandable — is evidence of the decline of our educational system! But the fact is that the singular they has been used for hundreds of years by the likes of Chaucer, Lewis Carroll, Walt Whitman, Shakespeare, Jane Austen, Oscar Wilde, and many more famous authors. You may not like to use the singular they. But it is not wrong to use it, and it has the added advantage of being gender neutral.

If the use of the singular they really bothers you in your own writing, you can recast your sentence by changing singulars to plurals. Use of “he or she” is clunky, dated, and less inclusive.

Following fake rules can result in sentences that are stilted or awkward.

Another tenaciously fake rule is the one about not ending sentences with a preposition. There is no rule that compels you to write “She asked him from where he had come,” rather than the more natural, “She asked him where he had come from.”

Feel free to end a sentence with a preposition. Famous writers have been doing it for hundreds of years! While you’re at it, split an infinitive and start a sentence or two with a conjunction. But don’t do it just to thumb your nose at the prescriptivists. Do it thoughtfully — and for a reason.

Punctuation is up for grabs, too.

Talking about his style of punctuation, author Cormac McCarthy said, “I believe in periods, in capitals, in the occasional comma, and that’s it.” He doesn’t use quotation marks or semicolons, and his use of the comma is exceedingly spare. If you write well, he says, you don’t need a lot of punctuation marks. Spare punctuation is a conscious choice on his part. (And his spare punctuation seems to mirror the spare worlds of his books.) He has studied other authors, James Joyce, for one, who used what might be considered eccentric styles of punctuation.

But here’s the thing: You can bet that McCarthy works hard to make sure that every sentence he writes immerses readers in the story he is telling. The dearth of punctuation does not confuse readers or take them out of the story — and he is consistent.

Punctuation is not always just about correctness.

A Dash of Style: The Art and Master of Punctuation, by literary agent Noah Lukeman, is a book I love to recommend because it discusses punctuation as a “medium for artistic expression.” It asks: “Why did Hemingway lean heavily on the period? Why did Faulkner eschew it? … How could punctuation differ so radically between these great authors? What did punctuation add that language itself could not?” It gives practical advice for using punctuation as a rhetorical tool. 

Even the Chicago Manual of Style folks understand that the rules are flexible, and they have just published the first post in their new “Fiction+” feature created to “show how [their] guidelines can be reinterpreted to take advantage of creative opportunities.”

Perhaps the desire to lean on the rules is an attempt to grasp onto certainty within a process—writing—that is inherently uncertain. But my wish for you is that as you write and revise you think about how your grammar and punctuation choices will affect the reader as much as you think about what’s correct.

Because here’s what really matters:

Great writing doesn’t happen just because you’re doing what is “correct.” Great writing happens because you’re being very conscious and deliberate about the choices you’re making as a writer and how those choices will affect your reader.

Perhaps  we talk too much about the rules, about correctness, and too little about style and artistic expression. Learn the rules, yes. And don’t flout them just for the sake of flouting them. But think about how employing rules or breaking them might affect the clarity, grace, pacing, tone, voice, and meaning in your writing. Think about how your choices affect the reader. Make your choices for a reason.

A version of this post appeared in The Florida Writer, the official magazine of the Florida Writers Association.