Friday, April 11, 2014

Notes and Example from Punctuation Workshop

You can find my paragraph example and our class notes as comments to this post.
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2 comments:

Brad said...

“A Masterpiece of Setting and Character: ‘A Spoiled Man’”
The work I like the most is “A Spoiled Man” by Daniyal Mueenuddin. Foremost for me is the story’s fabulous characterization of Rezak, the “small bowlegged man with a lopsided battered face.” How we learn to love him as a character (although not everyone will agree) and to feel his pain is a wonderful journey on a road not often travelled. The story emphasizes the differences between the rich and poor; nevertheless, it does it with sympathy for both sides of the equation. Although this is also true for “Literally”—the trip to find the boys at Bonita’s apartment comes to mind—Mueenuddin does it better. Perhaps what makes “A Spoiled Man” a story I like more is its exotic location: Pakistan. With his masterly descriptions of setting, Mueenuddin makes us “see” and “feel” more and, at the end, the description of Rezak’s cabin brought tears to my eyes as, forgotten by all, “the wind and blown rain scoured it clean.” In “A Spoiled Man” I find a new world, an unfamiliar one, populated with sympathetic characters and exotic and troubling settings that bring to me a new appreciation for the good qualities of my home here in Canada.

—199 words

April 11, 2014 at 1:57 PM
Brad said...

; semicolon
I like to watch football; my brother prefers hockey.

“Homework” is a fine story that I like very much; however, I much prefer “A Spoiled Man.”

MOREOVER (is this archaic? Or not used? Avoid overusing and remember that it is considered quite formal so only use it in very formal, academic style writing situations)

: colon
This is what I think about Victor: nice man.

These are the three characters I liked most in “A Spoiled Man”: Rezak, Sonya and Ghulam Rasool.
For full sentence quoting, a colon is needed.

This is the best description of Rezak’s hut: “A full sentence quote from the story that describes his hut.” (page 2)
The characters I prefer—Bonita, Richard and Isaac—are the ones that are most important to evaluate. A list in the middle of the sentence is possible by using dashes.

Parenthesis shows a bit less important information than dashes do. The dashes will make what is between them stand out to a reader and be more noticeable.

[ ] ( )
“He went to the door and shot his wife.”
“[Richard] went to the door and shot his wife.”

Use of the square bracket is important to show who “he” is since the story has more than one male character.

April 11, 2014 at 1:58 PM

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