Who Needs Punctuation?

Who Needs Punctuation?

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In a rare interview with Oprah Winfrey in 2007, the famous author Cormac McCarthy discusses his views on punctuation—or the lack thereof—as he professes, “If you write properly, you shouldn’t have to punctuate.”

http://www.oprah.com/oprahsbookclub/Oprahs-Exclusive-Interview-with-Cormac-McCar...

McCarthy goes on to say that it’s important to punctuate so that it makes it easy for people to read and understand, but there is no need to “block the page with weird little marks.” His novels do not contain quotation marks or semicolons or apostrophes for many contractions, and commas are used only when an occasional complex sentence needs clarification.

Below is an example of his writing style taken from the first few pages of The Road. Now, by no means do I assume to perform an edit on this renowned author's award-winning novel. But in an effort to explain my point, I have indicated missing punctuation and paragraphing in red brackets.

They crossed the river by an old concrete bridge[,] and a few miles on[,] they came upon a roadside gas station. They stood in the road and studied it. ["]I think we should check it out,["] the man said. ["]Take a look.["] The weeds they forded fell to dust about them. They crossed the broken asphalt apron and found the tank for the pumps. The cap was gone[,] and the man dropped to his elbows to smell the pipe[,] but the odor of gas was only a rumor, faint and stale. He stood and looked over the building. The pumps standing with their hoses oddly still in place. The windows intact. The door to the service bay was open[,] and he went in. A standing metal toolbox against one wall. He went through the drawers[,] but there was nothing there that he could use. Good half-inch drive sockets. A ratchet. He stood looking around the garage. A metal barrel full of trash. He went into the office. Dust and ash everywhere. The boy stood in the door. A metal desk, a cashregister. Some old automotive manuals, swollen and sodden. The linoleum was stained and curling from the leaking roof. He crossed to the desk and stood there. Then he picked up the phone and dialed the number of his father's house in that long ago. []The boy watched him. ["]What are you doing?["] he said.

A quarter mile down the road he stopped and looked back. ["]We're not thinking,["] he said. ["]We have to go back.["] He pushed the cart off the road and tilted it over where it could not be seen[,] and they left their packs and went back to the station. In the service bay[,] he dragged out the steel trashdrum and tipped it over and pawed out all the quart plastic oilbottles. Then they sat in the floor[,] decanting them of their dregs one by one, leaving the bottles to stand upside down[,] draining into a pan until[,] at the end[,] they had almost a half quart of motor oil. He screwed down the plastic cap and wiped the bottle off with a rag and hefted it in his hand. Oil for their little slutlamp to light the long gray dusks, the long gray dawns. []["]You can read me a story,["] the boy said. ["]Can[']t you, Papa?["] []["]Yes,["] he said. ["]I can.["]

http://www.oprah.com/oprahsbookclub/Read-an-Excerpt-from-The-Road-by-Cormac-McCa...

So if this guy can win the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction for a punctuation-starved novel, then who needs to learn proper punctuation? Well…anyone who expects to be taken seriously in the literary world, that's who. Don’t be fooled into thinking that Mr. McCarthy’s eccentricity is a result of any form of arrogance, rebellion, laziness, or illiteracy.

In order for McCarthy to create riveting masterpieces like The Road and No Country for Old Men—both riddled with his unorthodox style of sparse punctuation—he had to first completely understand English grammar and punctuation. Many of his fragmented sentences are devised to eliminate the comma needed to connect that absolute phrase or non-essential element to a complex sentence structure. Yet those frags are designed to add dynamic imagery to his scenes and characters. His quotation-markless dialogue is precisely arranged on the page in such a manner that the reader has no doubt as to who is speaking—even when he has multiple speakers in the same paragraph. His lack of apostrophes for certain contractions doesnt confuse the reader in the least, though I’m sure his spell-check device was thrust into overdrive. Personally, I found the story-line of The Road remarkably captivating. However, as an obsessive observer of punctuation rules and proper sentence structure, by page ten, I felt I needed to seek professional counseling for the crippling anxiety caused by McCarthy's ludicrous literary license.

Before you can get away with unconventional writing style, you must be an expert in the conventional. Before you can chop up complex sentences into comprehensible frags, you need to understand the technical intricacies of linguistic dissection.

Ernest Hemingway shares his views of taking liberties with literary license in this famous quote:

“My attitude toward punctuation is that it ought to be as conventional as possible. The game of golf would lose a good deal if croquet mallets and billiard cues were allowed on the putting green. You ought to be able to show that you can do it a good deal better than anyone else with the regular tools before you have a license to bring in your own improvements.”