Free A Dash of Style by Noah Lukeman Page A

language. The good news, at least, is that he writes with simplicity, which bodes well for clarity of thought and will serve him well once he masters his craft. He is also likely to offer a quicker pace.
    EXERCISES
    • Count the number of semicolons on the first page of one of your works. Now count the total number in your first chapter. What's the semicolon count per page? Per chapter? Do you barely use them? Or use them abundantly? Awareness is the first step.
    • Look for a place in your work that contains a cluster of short sentences that are related to each other. Can you connect any of these with a semicolon? What effect does it have? Can you apply this technique elsewhere in your work?
    • Look for a place in your work that contains several longer sentences that need to be long since they contain one or more complex thoughts. Can you break up any of these sentences with a semicolon? What effect does it have? Can you apply this technique elsewhere in your work?
    • Look for a place in your work where you use an abundance of semicolons. Can you cut some of them? What effect does it have? Can you apply this technique elsewhere in your work? (Notice how deleting semicolons gives power back to commas and periods.)
    • Look for a place in your work that reads too fast, where you'd like to slow the pace. Can you combine any sentences using semicolons? What effect does it have on pacing? Can you apply this technique elsewhere in your work?
    • Look for a place in your work that you feel reads too slowly, where you'd like to speed up the pace. Can you delete any semicolons? What effect does it have on pacing? Can you apply this technique elsewhere in your work?
    • Look for a paragraph in your work that contains sentences of wildly varying length. Can you use a semicolon to balance out sentence length? What effect does it have? Can you apply this technique elsewhere in your work?

While the punctuation marks discussed in part 1 (the period, comma, and semicolon) are the construction team of the punctuation world, the types of punctuation we'll cover in part 2 (the colon, dash, parentheses, quotation marks, paragraph and section breaks) exist to add flair. This is not to say that these marks don't also effect sentence construction—they can and certainly do. But, their most distinctive feature is their ability to make words stand out.
    They have the unique ability to propel words or clauses into the limelight, and their appearance always carry with them a good deal of panache. They are the drama queens of the punctuation world.
    Additionally, with the exception of the paragraph break, these marks rarely appear because they need to—they appear only if they want to. In fact, technically one could write a book without ever using one of these marks. The word "utilitarian" does not exist in their vocabulary. Fittingly, this part of the book will take the reader beyond the utilitarian and into the world of rarefied writing. Our house has been built. Now it's time to add the detail.
    THE COLON is the magician of the punctuation world. It holds its audience in suspense, waits until just the right moment, then voila: it pulls back the curtain to reveal the result. It sits on the very peak of drama, with all that comes before building to it, and all that follows a denouement. As such, it is one of the most effective punctuation marks to propel a word or clause into the limelight. (This is why the colon comes first in this section of the book.) Indeed, it is impossible to follow a colon in an inconspicuous way.
    Like the semicolon, the colon tends to be underused by creative writers, and when used, not used well. Most writers seem intimidated to use it creatively, perhaps because they equate it with its mundane usages (such as heralding a list, or a letter, or separating minutes from seconds on a clock). Other writers use it once or twice but find themselves overwhelmed by its dramatic power and are unsure where to go from