The Woodpecker

June 5, 2007 8:14 PM

My eight year old wrote her latest poem, then asked about the subtleties of poetic punctuation (commas, periods, breaks ... and why such decisions are made... help! ). The poem is included, as of course ...

The Woodpecker

I watched the woodpecker,
tapping at the tree,
in back of our house.

Its red head,
standing out,
like a rose.

Woodpecker,
Woodpecker,
Oh beautiful woodpecker.

posted by RMD to writing & language (32 comments total)

There is no right answer to this question. The purpose of punctuation and formatting in poetry is generally to drive the "meter" of it (except in some exceptions where, for example, the poem is printed in the shape of something, etc etc)...

If your daughter likes the commas there, they should go there. If she doesn't, they shouldn't.

You can use line breaks to put in a bit of a pause to the meter and leave out the comma if you want... or you can leave the comma in...

It's all up to her.
posted by twiggy at 8:28 PM on June 5, 2007

Also, if your daughter got "Its" correct and didn't put "It's", she's lightyears ahead of her peers in the punctuation department. Kudos to her!
posted by twiggy at 8:28 PM on June 5, 2007

I remember How to Write Poetry (90% certain that was the one I'm thinking of) as being a good one (especially for meter), but I forget whether it went into punctuation. I think it may have. I'm sure it had a little bit about breaks.

In poetry, you're often thinking about the sound of it more than in prose... about creating a certain effect. So, you can do things that you wouldn't necessarily do with prose (except in dialog). If it creates the effect that you want it to, it's right.
posted by Many bubbles at 8:36 PM on June 5, 2007

There is no right answer, but now's a great time to pull out an old grammar or English text book and go over the basics of punctuation with her - ie what semi colons are etc etc. This should let her get a feel for what could go where. It may require you brushing up a bit, but if you teach her now, she'll probably learn it better than she will at any other point in her life.
posted by fermezporte at 8:59 PM on June 5, 2007

I would ask her to read it out and then listen to where the commas/periods should be depending on where she pauses. You can explain to her that the comma functions in her poem as a brief pause in thought and cadence, while the period is a more dramatic one. Both serve to add additional emphasis to the line breaks, or can add a pause where there aren't line breaks.
posted by Packy_1962 at 9:06 PM on June 5, 2007

If you're daughter likes "Charlotte's Web" then you can tell her the author wrote a highly-esteemed and still often used book on punctuation and grammar. It's not exactly fun and games for a kid, but learning to speak and write well and with intelligence will get her very, very far in life.
posted by Brittanie at 9:53 PM on June 5, 2007

To echo everyone else: depends on what she wants to do with it.

Also, your daughter is eight? That poem's better than a lot of stuff I've read by adults!
posted by SansPoint at 9:59 PM on June 5, 2007

You may be interested in Rose, Where Did You Get Your Red by Kenneth Koch. It's a book about teaching poetry to children.
posted by dobbs at 10:15 PM on June 5, 2007

I'm no help, but I just wanted to say what a good writer your kid seems to be!
posted by lunasol at 10:30 PM on June 5, 2007

f you're daughter likes "Charlotte's Web" then you can tell her the author wrote a highly-esteemed and still often used book on punctuation and grammar.

The Elements of Style is okay, but mainly as a handy reference, not as something to read straight through or to use to learn how to use punctuation (it's my belief that you do that through osmosis, simply by reading many, many books). Besides, it's not so great for comma usage--the rules for commas are spread throughout the book, rather than being collected in one spot; I don't think it even mentions the "pause" aspect of the comma; and it presents the different rules regarding commas as separate things, without binding them together in any way.

It's good if you've just forgotten what a rule is (does the comma go before or after the parentheses?), though, or if you want to clarify/crystalize it in your mind (I've used it when editing someone else's work, in order to explain and justify my claims that a comma goes here, or a semicolon goes there).

Oh--if you haven't, you could get her some books of poems (Shel Slverstein is always good, of course--they're fun and g-rated, and he uses different forms and styles) so she can read them and see what others have done, and notice where they put their punctuation and what effect it has (using a comma vs. an em-dash vs. a line break). Or go over books she already has that way, just paying attention to those things. It's good to see both free verse and more traditional forms, too, and different authors.
posted by Many bubbles at 10:51 PM on June 5, 2007

I'm pretty sure it's out of print now, but I loved Jacqueline Jackson's Turn Not Pale, Beloved Snail when I was in elementary school. I bought a copy recently from a used bookseller, and it's probably available in many public libraries. It's a personal memoir/how to write book by a children's book author, aimed at children but never condescending. Though it's dated, I think it still stands up--it was already a decade old before I read it for the first time as a kid, anyway.

I liked your daughter's poem, by the way!
posted by hurdy gurdy girl at 12:03 AM on June 6, 2007

All the above are right on, and your daughter is brilliant! What a beautiful and vivid poem!
posted by metasav at 1:03 AM on June 6, 2007

And in a few years you might want to buy your brilliant daughter "The Ode Less Travelled: Unlocking the Poet Within by Stephen Fry.
Amazon reviews here : http://tinyurl.com/33lxh6

I have enjoyed listening to the audiobook of the same title.
posted by kryptos at 2:20 AM on June 6, 2007

The Ode Less Travelled: Unlocking the Poet Within by Stephen Fry
posted by kryptos at 2:33 AM on June 6, 2007

A period marks the end of a complete thought. I would give your daughter this definition and then play with her for a while, exploring the concept of "a complete thought." That's a somewhat fuzzy concept, but it can make sense through examples.

To me, a complete thought makes at least some kind of sense on it's own. For instance....

The blue.

... is not a complete thought. The blue what? How about... ?

The blue house.

It's better, because you can grasp a blue house in your mind as a complete idea. I've seen people craft sentences that way. I've done it myself. But it's atypical.

One way to think about it is to imagine you're having a conversation with someone, and you say your sentence. Will they be confused about what you mean?

A: The blue.

B: Huh? The blue what?

---

A: The blue house.

It's possible the B might accept that. He might say, "Ah yes, I remember that house!" But he might also say...

B: What about it?

For this reason, it's more typical for sentences to be about some object DOING something, some object BEING something, or some object HAVING some trait.

A. The blue house vanished from the neighborhood.

B might be totally confused about WHY the house vanished or HOW a house could vanish, but he's not at all confused about what A meant to convey.

That's an important point about the "complete thought" concept. It's not the case that the thought should be SO complete that the reader doesn't have any more questions. In fact, if the reader is going to keep reading, he should have questions. (Did it vanish by magic? Did a crew come in and wreck it? Are you sure they didn't just paint it another color?) But the reader SHOULD be able to understand what the writer is talking about. With "the blue", he can't even form meaningful questions, because there's nothing for him to grasp onto.

My main point here is that grammar is complicated. It's based around a collection of sensible rules (that are useful for making things clear), arbitrary traditions, and clever exceptions to those rules and traditions.

But when I was a kid, well-meaning people tried to simplify things for me, and for years that got me totally muddled. They would tell me iron-clad rules, and I yet I would see published writers breaking them. When I would bring this up, the grownups would say, "That's okay for Hemingway! He can get away with it." That's no answer.

At eight, I was smart enough to handle the truth, and it sounds like your daughter is, too. And the best way to learn is by play. You and she should write a whole bunch of sentences together and debate whether they are, in fact, complete thoughts. Or whether they're incomplete but worthy of a period anyway, because the period creates an interesting effect.

Just remember these two things:

1. Readers want things to make sense.
2. Readers want to be thrilled with new sensations.

Sometimes those two things go hand-in-hand; sometimes they are at war, and punctuation must pick sides.

Commas are for pauses within complete thoughts. There are all sorts of examples (and exceptions) -- and you and your daughter should explore them -- but a simple one is...

The house was dark, dreary, and dusty.

That makes more sense than...

The house was dark. dreary. and dusty.

... because those aren't three complete thoughts. They are all part of one complete thought. Or are they? Discuss.

There's a fun book called "Spunk and Bite" (a response to "Elements of Style" by Strunk and White), which is all about "breaking the rules" to create interesting effects when writing.

To me, part of the joy of writing is knowing all the schoolhouse rules and flirting with them. Sometimes breaking them.
posted by grumblebee at 3:26 AM on June 6, 2007 [4 favorites]

Link to Spunk and Bite.
posted by grumblebee at 3:27 AM on June 6, 2007

copyeditor here. delete the marked commas. explanation below.

The Woodpecker

I watched the woodpecker, *
tapping at the tree, *
in back of our house. ** comma, not period

Its red head, *
standing out, *
like a rose.

Woodpecker,
Woodpecker,
Oh beautiful woodpecker.


explanation: unless you are doing something academically arty with the punctuation (and she's eight, so she's not) you want to keep the punctuation consistent with the rules of prose. in other words, if you took out all the line breaks and had it read as a couple of sentences, you wouldn't have those commas or that one marked period there. (you would in the last stanza, because it's gramatically correct.)

so, as a sentence, it should read:

I watched the woodpecker tapping at the tree in back of our house, its red head standing out like a rose. Woodpecker, woodpecker, oh beautiful woodpecker.
posted by thinkingwoman at 5:36 AM on June 6, 2007 [1 favorite]

Thanks for all of this.

grumblebee: But when I was a kid, well-meaning people tried to simplify things for me, and for years that got me totally muddled. They would tell me iron-clad rules, and I yet I would see published writers breaking them. When I would bring this up, the grownups would say, "That's okay for Hemingway! He can get away with it." That's no answer.

Grumblebee, I had very similar experiences as a kid, but in the visual arts. Now, as a working artist, I realize that many of those well meaning adults were just not capable of being helpful when it came to what I needed to know. I guess that is what I am hoping to avoid here.

I think I have some reading to do. Thanks.
posted by RMD at 6:42 AM on June 6, 2007

Re: commas. For years, as a kid, I had trouble mastering them, and that made me self-conscious about my writing. I blame my teachers: over an over, they told me that you place a comma where you'd naturally pause when reading the sentence aloud. I know they meant well. They were trying to make writing into more of an art than a science. Maybe this rule even works for some. But I was baffled.

I would look at a sentence like, "When I went to school this morning, my teacher gave me a surprise test," and I would think of all places pauses COULD go if you said it out loud. And I came up with things like this:

When I went to school this morning, my teacher gave me a [pause] surprise test.

You might pause there if you were trying to create suspense. In fact, when we speak, we put pauses in all sorts of odd places (especially if we happen to be Christopher Walken). As I'm apt to do, I took my teahers' advice overly-literally, and it really screwed me up.

I suppose, if you're going to use the pause-method for placing commas, you should be clear that you're talking about a flat reading of the sentence. In other words, if you read the sentence with as little emphasis as possible, where do you stop to take a breath.

But the truth is, there are rules about comma-placement. You can learn them and move on. I wish someone had taught them to me when I was younger.

==

I agree very strongly with thinkingwoman. Assuming a poem is a piece of communication and not a game one is playing for one's own amusement, one should follow rules that help the communication process. Which is what the standard-usage rules do.

It IS poetry, so by all means break the rules for an interesting effect. But know that you're doing so, and weigh the benefits of the effect vs. clarity.

What drives me bonkers is the "stick it to the man" attitude of fuck the rules! The rules don't stem from Big Bother trying to shackle you; they're an attempt at getting us to all speak the same language so that we can understand each other.
posted by grumblebee at 6:57 AM on June 6, 2007

The Elements of Style is okay

No it's not.
posted by languagehat at 3:28 PM on June 6, 2007

Apologies in advance for length; I'd have linked if it were easily available elsewhere. As others have answered far better than I could at the moment, I would only like to share an excerpt from Margaret Edson's play Wit, which has stuck in my mind ever since I first saw it and sums up for me the relevance of punctuation to meaning. The film is excellent, although not recommended unless you're in the mood to weep like a small child. Anyway, in a flashback, one sees the main character (Vivian) discussing the difference in punctuation between two versions of a poem by John Donne.

...
PROFESSOR.
You've missed the point of the poem because you've used an edition of the text that is inauthentically punctuated. In the Gardner edition...
VIVIAN.
That edition was checked out of the library--
PROFESSOR.
Miss Bearing!
VIVIAN.
Sorry.
PROFESSOR.
You take this too lightly, Miss Bearing. This is Metaphysical Poetry, not The Modern Novel. The standards of scholarship and critical reading which one would apply to any other text are simply insufficient. The effort must be total for the results to be meaningful. Do you think that the punctuation of the last line of this sonnet is merely an insignificant detail?
The sonnet begins with a valiant struggle with death, calling on all the forces of intellect and drama to vanquish the enemy. But it is ultimately about overcoming the seemingly insuperable barriers separating life, death and eternal life.
In the edition you chose, this profoundly simple meaning is sacrificed to hysterical punctuation:
"And Death" -- capital D -- "shall be no more" -- semicolon!
"Death" -- capital D -- comma -- "thou shalt die" -- exclamation point!
If you go in for this sort of thing I suggest you take up Shakespeare.
Gardner's edition of the Holy Sonnets returns to the Westmoreland manuscript source of 1610 -- not for sentimental reasons, I assure you, but because Helen Gardner is a scholar. It reads:
"And death shall be no more," comma, "Death thou shalt die."
(As she recites this line, she makes a little gesture at the comma.)
Nothing but a breath -- a comma -- separates life from life everlasting. It is very simple, really. With the original punctuation restored, death is no longer something to act out on a stage, with exclamation points. It's a comma, a pause. This way, the uncompromising way, one learns something from the poem, wouldn't you say? Life, death. Soul, God. Past, present. Not insuperable barriers, not semicolons, just a comma.
VIVIAN.
Life, death ... I see. (Standing.) It's a metaphysical conceit. It's wit! I'll go back to the library and rewrite the paper --
PROFESSOR. (Standing emphatically.)
It is not wit, Miss Bearing. It is truth.
posted by Gingersnap at 4:33 PM on June 6, 2007

It IS poetry, so by all means break the rules for an interesting effect. But know that you're doing so, and weigh the benefits of the effect vs. clarity.

Very true, and true for prose, as well. You just have to be aware that a broken rule calls attention to itself--more or less so, depending on how regular it usually is--and know what effect you're going to create.

No it's not.

Yes, "Words and Expressions Commonly Misused" and "An Approach to Style" are very... hit and miss. As is "Elementary Principles of Composition" (don't use passive voice? Really?). The first chapter and the glossary, though, are handy, as I said, for reminding yourself what the exact rule is (unless you want to know about parentheses (which are my favorite bits of punctuation), in which case you're SOL). You can't treat every word in the book as holy writ, obviously. But then, you shouldn't do that with any guide. If you do, you end up with all the odd prejudices of the author.
posted by Many bubbles at 4:36 PM on June 6, 2007

Don't use passive voice? Really?

I hope you're not suggesting that writers should use the passive voice? It's a blight on humanity.
posted by grumblebee at 6:31 PM on June 6, 2007

I hope you're not suggesting that writers should use the passive voice? It's a blight on humanity.

I'm suggesting that committing yourself to active voice all the time can mean sacrificing brevity, simplicity, or even clarity, and that writers should use whatever works best in that instance, as with most things.

And if you really hated it, you wouldn't have used it in your own comment, so perhaps I should just assume that was sarcasm.
posted by Many bubbles at 6:48 PM on June 6, 2007

(Strike that last bit, please; I was mistaken.)
posted by Many bubbles at 6:56 PM on June 6, 2007

You may have been mistaken, but I'm sure I do use the passive voice sometimes. When I do, it's almost always because I'm doing my best writing or not proofing.

I'm not dogmatic about any writing rule, but I can't think of times when I've found passive-voice useful. (Other than in dialog, when I'm trying to write a character who's trying to avoid responsibility for whatever he's talking about.)

I've can't think of a time when passive-voice made things simpler or clearer, but I'll give you "brevity." Sometimes you can use fewer words via passive-voice, and brevity IS a virtue, but it shouldn't trump simplicity and clarity, unless maybe you're writing a text message.

All of this is my opinion, of course. But it's grounded in a simple belief: that writing works best when sparks the senses. We experience the world by seeing, hearing, tasting, smelling and touching. So when I'm trying to communicate with the reader, my goal is always to make them see, hear, taste, smell or touch (or imagine they're doing one of those things).

It doesn't matter if I'm writing a short story or a technical manual. I know readers will get my ideas better if I attack their senses. I can't achieve this in every sentence, but I try. I go through each sentence and look for ways to make it more sensual (never in a gratuitous way). To me, that's the main point of metaphor. Metaphor lets me make abstract ideas sensual. They're not sensual by nature, but I can liken them to something that is.

Now everything we care about in an object. We care about people, trees, dogs, houses, computers, chairs, breasts, boogers, hamburgers, footballs, TVs, pizzas, presidents, countries, faces and dollar bills. You can do things to objects; objects can do things to you; and objects can do things to other objects. When something does something to something, the result is always sensual. (We can only DO through our bodies, and when can only know about the DONE through our senses.)

Active-voiced sentences are about something doing something: "John ate the pie." Passive-voiced sentences are non-sensual -- or, at best, much less sensual: "the pie was eaten."

Furthermore, whenever I encounter a passive-voice sentence in my own writing, I try to re-write it. I ask myself, "WHO was doing WHAT?" To my shock, I often realize that I don't know. In other words, I realize that I've written the passive sentence because my thinking was muddled or because I was trying to avoid (or mute) a painful truth.

One of the big enemies to strong, active-voiced writing is academic prose in which people bend over backwards to avoid using the word "I" when clearly "I" is the natural subject.

This is the same sort of writing that contains phrases like, "there's a school of thought that..." or "it could be argued that..." Not passive-voiced, but still passive. Those phrases drive me batshit. WHO could make the argument? WHAT school of thought? When I read crap like that, it makes me think the writer has a weak argument that he's trying to fob off as a strong one by invoking some sort of amorphous authority.

Be clear. Say, "Republicans argue that..." Be brave. Say, "I believe that..."
posted by grumblebee at 3:42 AM on June 7, 2007

Sorry about the huge number of typos in that last post. Ironic, I know, when I'm preaching about writing. I hope I got my point across.
posted by grumblebee at 5:09 AM on June 7, 2007

*nod*

Well, I said that mainly because I'd been laboring under the misapprehension that "forms of 'to be'" = "passive voice". Now that I know what it actually is, it looks much less useful/desirable. (I was going off of memories of an English class where we had to eliminate is/are/was/were/be/being/been from our papers, in the name of eliminating passive voice. (There was probably an explanation, but having to go through and get rid of "be verbs" was a lot more memorable.) Then I thought I'd look it up, to be sure. Ah.)

When I read crap like that, it makes me think the writer has a weak argument that he's trying to fob off as a strong one by invoking some sort of amorphous authority.

I've mainly seen those used when someone's talking about the other side's argument. "It can be argued that blah, but foobar addresses this by etc." I think there it's more likely a case of the writer knowing that it's a common argument and not wanting to cite it, not being sure whose argument it is, or having thought up the argument themselves (not necessarily as a straw man--they might just be anticipating what the other side might say, and trying to forestall it). Of course, they could replace it with, "One argument is," but that sacrifices the precious, precious wordcount. I firmly believe that things like this are most often not conscious weasel words, but a bad habit left over from times of trying to add length to papers after running out of things to say. That, or the habit of imitating that "academic prose" style.
posted by Many bubbles at 7:54 PM on June 7, 2007

If you eliminate to-be verbs, you're writing in e-prime. E-prime's creator harbored lofty, philosophical goals, whereas I just use it as a writing exercise. I forced myself to write in e-prime for a year (as I do, again, in this post), and though I struggled at first, I now excel at it.

To-be words can stay. They don't kill the language, but if you forgo them for a while, you'll emerge a better writer. You'll force yourself to re-think each sentence as truly active. Sentences involved objects doing! Sentence don't involve objects being.

"I am in love" vs. "I love Sally."

"My hair is messed up" vs. "I forgot to comb my hair."

"Friday is the last weekday" vs. "The work-week end with Friday."

As I say, I don't worship e-prime or follow its rules, but ever since playing with it for a year, my "to-be" sentences stand out to me like stains on a tablecloth. I always examine them and look for ways to rewrite them. And when I figure out a rewrite, the sentence generally wind up stronger and more evocative. Sometimes, though, the most direct route is through "to be". So with a pang of sadness, I put the cap back on my red pen.
posted by grumblebee at 7:50 AM on June 8, 2007

I'd never heard of e-prime before... after reading the wikipedia article on it and a couple of the links, it looks like one of its assumptions is that there's no such thing as an absolute, objective property of something, only what an observer perceives (at least, if the statement that its creator specifically disliked the "identity" and "predication" uses is accurate). So, it doesn't provide a way to rephrase such a thing. I'm fascinated that their "red" example was so close to the "pain in the ass to convert, and ends up being unwieldy" example I always think of, too.

But as long as you aren't trying to express those (and it seems like they're few and far between, compared to "facts" that are more subjective... Hm... "Augusta is the capital of Maine," "It's the second book in the series," oh, but there's the class of "X is in or at [location]," where the focus is on the actual place X is, not what X is doing there) I can see how it would be a useful exercise.

"I am in love" vs. "I love Sally."
But "being in love with" is different from "loving". The revision changes the meaning.
posted by Many bubbles at 3:20 AM on June 9, 2007

You're right, and if the difference is key to your point, you should use the former.

"I am in love" is interesting, because it doesn't strike you in a sensory organ and it doesn't evoke an action. It's an amorphous state. Still, it will probably connect with the reader, because he's probably been in love. Love may be something totally different for him than what it is to you. It's up to you, as a writer how much you care about that. (What's most important is that you realize that you're using a phrase that will evoke vastly different feelings in different readers.)

Re: e-prime, I'm uninterested in the philosophical underpinning, so I have no problem (when I'm not forcing myself to do an exercise) writing "Augusta is the capital of Maine." But I try to only use to-be in cases like that.

Laziness prompts me to write sentences like, "I am hungry," when I find things like this, I rewrite them. Maybe, "My stomach is growling. What's in the fridge?" As with the love example, this does change the meaning, but it's probably not an important change. We don't know the context, but I can probably keep the changed meaning an still get my main point across (whatever it is), and I've traded some un-evocative writing for some specific, sensual writing.

I get paid to write technical, computer books, and I struggled at first to find ways to make them active. I finally realized that my "main characters" were me, the reader, and the computer application I was writing about. So whereas I initially wrote sentences like this...

A click inside the text-entry field brings up the dialog box.

... I now write...

If you click inside the text-entry field, Photoshop will display a dialog box.

I try, even when writing about the driest subject, to evoke a world of people and objects doing things to each other.
posted by grumblebee at 7:18 AM on June 9, 2007

"I am in love" is interesting, because it doesn't strike you in a sensory organ and it doesn't evoke an action. It's an amorphous state.

Exactly! It's an emotion. Whereas, "I love Sally" is not only an action, but a cause, in a way... the person is in that state, feels that emotion, because they love Sally. (And, is it just me, or isn't one more apt to say "in love with" rather than "love" mostly at the beginning? I think it conveys additional information in that way, as well--if someone's saying it like that, it's probably the first part of romantic love. Or they're pining.) Besides, what if the context is that it's the answer to a question? "Why are you acting so goofy?" "I love Sally!" It's almost a non sequitur, unless it's a lead-in to the actual reason ("I love Sally! She got me advance tickets to Fantastic Four!"). I think this is an important change. Just getting the point across isn't always enough.

(It also switches the focus to Sally immediately. It's abrupt.)

This is an interesting case, because with (all? most?) other emotions, you can just use "feel" and it's fine: "I'm just happy today," vs. "I just feel happy today." But, "I feel in love," isn't a sentence you'd come across in English very often.

Re: e-prime, I'm uninterested in the philosophical underpinning, so I have no problem (when I'm not forcing myself to do an exercise) writing "Augusta is the capital of Maine." But I try to only use to-be in cases like that.

I think what I was trying to say (or at least, am now, after thinking it over more) was that, because of the philosophical underpinning, it thinks certain kinds of statements shouldn't exist--even though those kinds of statements may be necessary or useful at some points. So even using it as an excercise is iffy, since at the same time as you develop good habits, you also form (although to a lesser extent) a bad habit or two: avoiding those kinds of statements, writing them in an awkward way, or both.


The second version definitely seems friendlier... more involving. I think part of it is that it's in second person... I mean, with, "If someone clicks..." or even "If I click..." it goes right back to being distant. That's an interesting effect; I hadn't noticed that before.
posted by Many bubbles at 11:24 PM on June 14, 2007