Paragraphing, Punctuation & Proofing

I’ve been saying it for ages: before you hit the final keystroke of your assignment to print or email it (preferably the latter – you know my penchant for trying to save the planet) you need to ‘proof-read‘ it (faire une relecture).

Some students do, but it seems to me that most don’t or they haven’t really understood how to do it thoroughly and effectively.

I have always advocated reading things out loud – I for one find far more mistakes or improvements I could make by reading out loud as opposed to silently reading on screen with my eyes.  Given what I said above, I shouldn’t really say what I am about to say, but I think I find even more to correct or improve if I get off-screen, print a copy (in ‘draft/brouillon’ mode to save ink and to print on the reverse sides of pages already printed upon and surplus to requirement) then get out of the study, sit in a comfy chair and read out loud to three bemused dogs!  It also offers the eyes a rest from the screen and the opportunity to freshen up a bit and settle down with some Lady Grey tea or perhaps an ice cold Muscat Sec.  They say that ‘a change is as good as a rest‘, and in this case I find the old adage to be true…. but whether the dogs find it restful to be read at is thankfully not recorded!

There is another ‘plus‘ to proofing a hard copy: the fact that one sees the whole page and how it looks rather than just a couple of paragraphs on screen (unless one shrinks to fit one page on the screen which makes it far too small to read at all (if you are as old as I am) or with comfort (if you are as young as, well, you!).   That helps get a sense of structure and development; particularly paragraph lengths and breaks.

OK, well that’s  my view, but in reading a book by Francine Prose (I bet her surname is a nom de plume!) entitled: ‘Reading Like a Writer. A guide for people who love books and for those who want to write them‘, I have discovered that she is very much of the same opinion, though as a writer she explains it far better than me as you will affirm from the citations below:

« Read your work out loud, if you can, if you aren’t too embarrassed by the sound of your own voice ringing out when you are alone in a room. Chances are that the sentence you can hardly pronounce without stumbling is a sentence that needs to be re-worked to make it smoother and more fluent.  A poet once told me that he was reading a draft of  new poem out loud to himself when a thief broke into his Manhattan loft. Instantly surmising that he had entered the dwelling of a madman, the thief turned and ran without taking anything, and without harming the poet.  So it may be that reading aloud will not only improve its quality but save your life in the process.« 

From my perspective, this is quite revealing as it brings together all the three elements in my title.  The ‘stumbling‘ to which Prose refers is the key (the cue that we need to stop and have a good long look at what has caused the problem) and there is a lot that can make us stumble:

• finishing one paragraph only to find upon reading the first few words of the next that it carries on within a heartbeat of the previous one and there really shouldn’t have been a paragraph break at all: it spoils the thread you were trying to weave.
• taking your cues from your punctuation (comma = tiny pause, semi-colon = a slightly longer pause, colon = a rather longer pause, full-stop = an emphatic long pause marking a definitive end to the sentence) can sometimes cause problems if it doesn’t fit your meaning or intention.  I have heard of documents that have been the subject of dispute in the High Court where a comma or its absence changed the meaning totally and it cost one party millions of dollars as a result: the company intended one thing, but rendered it incorrectly in the punctuation which gave the reader the right to rely on the document as written and not as the company might have wished it to be.  So if you hear yourself stuttering, hesitating, confused and lost in the echoes bouncing off the wall you certainly need to revisit the sentence and its structure.  This could involve breaking it into two sentences or looking at the ordering of clauses and phrases and working at the punctuation.

In the same book, Prose cites  Strunk and White’s thoughtful advice on the subject of paragraphs:

« In general, remember that paragraphing calls for a good eye as well as a logical mind. Enormous blocks of print [TJ: I’ve always called them ‘walls of text’] look formidable to readers who are often reluctant to tackle them.  Therefore, breaking long paragraphs in two, even if it is not necessary to do so for sense, meaning or logical development, is often a visual help.  But remember too, that firing off many short paragraphs in quick succession can be distracting …. Moderation and a sense of order should be the main consideration in paragraphing.

Prose herself adds:

« The one-sentence paragraph should be used sparingly, if at all.  But it does have its uses. »

[TJ: interesting use of ‘But’ as the first word of a sentence.  Usually it is considered poor style as words like ‘but’ and ‘and’ are conjunctions – they join things together so they should not normally be used at the beginning of a sentence.  Here I guess, Prose is trying to make a big point and signals it with an exception to the general rule].

She continues:

« If the writer is going to draw attention to the stand-alone sentence, the sentence had better to be worth it.  That is, the sentence should have enough content – enough resonance – to justify this slightly unusual attention-grabbing device. »

I couldn’t have put it better – and this you can see on the whole page and hear in the process of reading out loud.  The question then becomes: are you prepared to invest the time and effort in addressing the ‘stumbling‘?

You should.

[TJ. The two word paragraph above represents my attempt to take Prose’s advice!]

You know what you have written and what you intended to write, and if you are stumbling, then just imagine how the reader feels (and, if he/she is the marker, what impression you have just created and what impact this might have on your final mark).

At another university I once failed a second year degree student’s essay in Microeconomics because, in all honesty, I couldn’t find the Microeconomics through the lens of the student’s apalling written English (extremely poor paragraphing, grammar, expression, spelling, punctuation etc and total lack of proof-reading).  I wrote that on her assignment.  She came in to see me absolutely incensed by my comments – apparently, in her view, I was not there to comment upon her English .  We went through the entire assignment sentence by sentence, paragraph by paragraph with her reading out loud.  She was ‘stumbling‘ everywhere and repeated ad infinitum the mantra: « But what I meant to say was…« .   I replied that I could only mark what she had written rather than what she wished she had written.   She left upset and chastened.  At the graduation ceremony (she did graduate: and well too) she came up to me with her parents and told me that that hour we had spent on the way she used her English to express herself was the most precious lesson she had had in her entire academic career.  She had decided to really ‘attack‘ the points at issue – especially adopting the idea of reading out loud to ‘proof‘ her work – and had seen her average marks increase significantly across the board.  Her parents almost hugged me – they had been trying to convince her to deal with this shortcoming since her school days and were proud that she had finally addressed the issue to good effect.

Language is clearly the critical ‘lens’ through which you, your ideas and your abilities are perceived and that is far more than just a lot of words on the page.

So, as my Dad would have said: « Now think on »……

Attribution of source cited above.

Prose, Francine (2007).  Reading Like a Writer. A guide for people who love books and for those who wanted to write them.  Harper Perennial.