Tag: clarity

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Uncategorized

Clarity is the Key to Great Writing

Craft Essentials

“You can solve most of your writing problems if you stop after every sentence and ask: what does the reader need to know next?”

William Zinsser, On Writing Well

As a reader, how long are you willing to struggle to make sense of an article or book that doesn’t seem to make sense? It may lack sufficient description or information – which deprives the reader of clarity. When that happens, I often believe the story existed in the writer’s mind but missed the transfer to the page. The reader is lost and often the work is abandoned. While this is a challenge for some, putting additional words on the page to clarify and connect the dots is easier than discarding those with whom you’ve already fallen in love.

The greater challenge – the opposite scenario – is also true. Have you experienced a highly anticipated book with a great premise but discover the author’s style features sentences the length of the Gettysburg Address? By the time you reach the end of the paragraph, the topic is muddled, and the reader is lost. The story line has taken a detour and the reader flips back several pages in an attempt to solve the riddle. The results are similar to those above. Frustration, and the book is abandoned. You may leave it on the nightstand to protect the wood from the water ring. But you’ve left it behind.

My favorite writing guru, Professor William Zinsser addressed the issue often with his students. “Clutter is the disease of American writing.”

As a writing coach, I’m often asked to review books for potential publication. Writers are hesitant to submit the work without a professional assessment. I provide this level of support and insight when working with an aspiring author. But when a writing hopeful has worked without coaching, mentoring, or input from a critique partner or group, anxiety about this next step toward publication is common.

Even in what I consider high-potential work, there’s often vital improvement that must be done before it’s submission ready. Routinely I find one of the two issues described in the opening paragraphs.

The “story” never made it to the page – at least not enough for the reader to be swept in.

  • Transitions are missing or insufficient.
  • Descriptions are sparse if they exist at all.

Far more often the problem is the in-depth description that sends the reader on a scavenger hunt for the plotline.

  • The elaborately detailed scene or section would have been improved had it been done in 1/3 of the time.
  • The reader is worn out and confused by the non-essential information which found its’ way to the page.

We do fall in love with the words we’ve written.

At times the words flow onto the page with little effort, plucked from the heavenlies, inspired by the moment or the muse. These are magical but elusive experiences.

More often we struggle and the word fairy mocks us. When the right words appear, we celebrate, energized to press on. The suggestion to remove even a few is akin to plucking out one’s eye.

But it’s not about us. It’s always about the reader.

“Hard writing makes easy reading. Easy writing makes hard reading.”

William Zinsser

Which of these scenarios – too little or too much – are challenging you?

Deb DeArmond

Deborah DeArmond is a recognized leader in the fields of performance development, facilitation. She is a certified writing coach as well as an executive business coach. She is also an award-winning author.

Deb’s the author of Related by Chance, Family by Choice, I Choose You Today, and Don’t Go to Bed Angry. Stay Up and Fight! All three books focus on relationship dynamics, communication, and conflict resolution. Her humorous devotional entitled Bumper Sticker Be-Attitudes was published in late 2019. Her newest release, We May Be Done But We’re Not Finished: Making the Rest of Your Life the Best of Your Life was released in July. She has published more than 200 articles in print and online, including a monthly column, now in her 7th year for Lifeway Magazine with an international circulation of 300,000.

Deb helps clients achieve success in becoming the coach others desire to work through through her engaging inquiry, humor, and straightforward approach. Her clients have described Deb as “candid but kind” and skilled at asking the questions that help “guide others to discover their answers and solutions to success.”

Categories
Book Proposals

How to Grab Attention in Your Opening Paragraph

 “Don’t Bury the Lead” is a common instruction to new writers. Literary agents and editors receive high volumes of email and physical submissions. If your prime material is over on page six, it may never be read. According to some at any given time there are over a million manuscripts and proposals in the in boxes of agents and editors. With that volume of material, most of us have seconds to give a submission and decide if we are going to do anything other than delete it (yes harsh but the truth).

As writers, it is our task to capture this attention and get the recipient to keep reading and ultimately to work with you on getting that submission published. Your words count and will be the attention-getter for that individual.

There are many ways to capture positive attention from these professionals. Almost every element of a book proposal is important. If you don’t know what goes into a book proposal, then I would encourage you to begin there. Every writer—even if you self-publish needs a book proposal because this document contains information which does not appear in your manuscript but is your business plan for your book.

In this article, I’m encouraging every writer should give their opening paragraph a little bit of extra polish before sending it. Here’s a number of ways to get read:

man working on an article

Tips for an attention-grabbing opening paragraph

1. Begin with a startling statistic related to your book or yourself. If you have millions of potential readers for your topic, beginning with this statistic captures attention. Also if you have a large email list or a social media following, this statistic can kick start the reading process.

2. Ask an intriguing question. A thought-provoking question is another great beginning to a proposal.

3. Open with an engaging story. Everyone loves a moving story. If you can tell this story in a few words with intrigue or entertainment, you pull the editor or agent into your proposal.

Whatever method you use, it is important to get the editor or agent reading your submission. Several years ago I interviewed another acquisitions editor and asked how he found a good submission. He answered: “Terry, I read the first sentence and if it is a good sentence I read the next sentence. If it is a good paragraph, I read the next paragraph and if it is a good page, I read the next page.” This editor revealed if it is a poor sentence or paragraph or page, he stops and goes on to the next submission. To learn more about proposals, I encourage you to check out my free webinar: askaboutproposals.com

Writers have confided to me their key material in the sixth chapter. My advice: don’t do it. Your reader may never get there. Start your proposal with a bang.

W. Terry Whalin, a writer and acquisitions editor lives in Colorado. A former magazine editor and former literary agent, Terry is an acquisitions editor at Morgan James Publishing. He has written more than 60 nonfiction books including Jumpstart Your Publishing Dreams and Billy Graham. Get Terry’s newest book, 10 Publishing Myths for only $10, free shipping and bonuses worth over $200. To help writers catch the attention of editors and agents, Terry wrote his bestselling Book Proposals That $ell, 21 Secrets To Speed Your Success. The revised and updated edition will release October 5th. Check out his free Ebook, Platform Building Ideas for Every Author. His website is located at: www.terrywhalin.com. Connect with Terry on Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn.

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Marketing Sense

A Vague Marketing Message Stunts Your Growth

Marketing sense

Consider the following answer to “What do you do?“:

“We’re a women empowerment company. We facilitate courses and events to expand entrepreneurs and corporate leaders through education.”

This marketing message is so vague that it’s useless.

Let’s Dissect This Answer Phrase-By-Phrase, Shall We, Not to Ridicule the Writer, But to Learn from Their Example

What is a “women empowerment company”? Could the writer mean, “We empower women?” That’s more direct, it’s result-oriented, and it tells us who they serve without requiring us to stop and decipher the unfamiliar phrase used in the original.

“We facilitate courses and events.” The definition for facilitate is to, “make [something] easier,” or, “to assist the process of (a person).” Making a blind leap from “assisting” to “teaching” here, do they create and present their own courses, invite teachers outside their company to present to their clients, or something else? And do they plan and host events, or present their own?

We don’t know because the mysterious description doesn’t tell us.

“…to expand entrepreneurs and corporate leaders…” Hmmm…most of the professionals I know don’t want to “expand” themselves. Do you?

Entrepreneurs and corporate leaders want to learn how to do XYZ so they can keep more profits, hire better qualified employees, create and grow a YouTube channel, improve their marketing message, or any of a billion possibilities, but they don’t want to expand the way the writer uses the word.

“…through education.” Aha! Now we’re getting somewhere! But we still don’t know what topics they teach (or, as mentioned above, whether they do the teaching, or an outside company does). Sigh.

Let’s Look at the Description Again and Give the Company a Fictitious Name: Women, Inc.

“Women, Inc., is a women empowerment company. We facilitate courses and events to expand entrepreneurs and corporate leaders through education.”

How Can We Untangle This Mess and Turn It into an Effective Marketing Message?

Since we’re not given many concrete concepts, we’ll have to fill in the blanks ourselves, by guessing. The one thing Women, Inc. clearly communicates: they serve female entrepreneurs and corporate leaders. Gotcha.

But wait. That could be misinterpreted. Some might not realize that ALL of Women, Inc.’s clients are female, so let’s change that phrase to, “female business leaders and owners,” since the word, “business” is commonly understood to apply to both “leaders” and “owners.”

What problem(s) does Women, Inc. help their audience solve? Since we’re not given a single hint, we must concoct one: stagnant profits due to a lack of company focus.

What’s their process? Education via courses and events.

What result does Women, Inc. promise? Development of mission, vision, and values statements. Ideally, these will become each company’s blueprint for future growth, investing, hiring, and marketing, all of which result in higher profits.

Turn that around to put the juiciest benefit at the beginning and we get…

Women, Inc. allows female business leaders and owners to enjoy higher profits by developing their company’s three most powerful guiding principles.

Notice that this doesn’t answer every potential question. It’s supposed to attract the audience Women, Inc. was created to serve—to start a two-way conversation—if it does that, it’s done its job.

There’s more than one way to communicate this same concept, and each may be perfect. The fun—and frustration—of marketing is that you get to choose what to say and how to say it.

Though this example focused on a fictional company, the process is the same for every marketer.

Do YOUR Readers Have to Guess How Your Writing or Speaking Will Improve Their Lives?

The burden is on you to succinctly explain what your book or presentation is about, and the practical benefits it offers those who apply it.

I’ve been a marketing coach for over 20 years, and no one, including me, gets it right the first time. Give yourself permission to develop an uber-clear marketing message that includes 1) who you serve (specifically!), 2) their problem (as it relates to your expertise). 3) your process (the method used to solve their problem), and 4) their practical result (if they apply your message).

Tinker with it, set it aside, and come back to it as often as necessary. It takes a bit of persistence and brain power, but it’s oh, so worth it. Ask Christ to help you, for He is the perfect marketer and after all, He knows exactly how He wants you to communicate with your audience.

Your target market will now know—at a glance—that you’re the one who can help them. Adjust anything in your content, on your website, or your social media that needs to match your new, focused marketing message, and your business or ministry will finally begin to grow!

Patricia Durgin is an Online Marketing Coach and Facebook Live Expert. She trains Christian writers and speakers exclusively, helping them develop their messaging, marketing funnels, conversational emails, and Facebook Live programs. Patricia hosted 505 (60-minute) Facebook Live programs from 2018-2020. That program is on indefinite hiatus. She’s also a regular faculty member at Christian writers and speakers conferences around the country.

Categories
Screenwriting

Do You Know What You Mean?

Recently, I uploaded my latest screenplay to a screenwriting website for Hollywood producers and studios to view. I was excited to finally have a completed script on this popular screenwriting website.

What I failed to realize was the specifics of the process of getting a script uploaded. Not only were there numerous categories and subcategories and tags to choose to describe my latest WIP, but there are also some specific questions in regards to my script’s purpose.

  • Genre
  • Setting/locations
  • Theme

At first glance, one might think the first and last questions are the same, but they aren’t. Genre is more of a style of storytelling with its unique aspects. Theme is the ultimate message/beliefs/morals of the story expressed through specific genres.

The site has become popular for helping outsiders break into Hollywood circles, not just for getting completed works before the right people, but helping establish the screenwriter’s platform and area of focus in storytelling.

To some degree writers keep similar themes in all of their stories, because stories are simply a means for us writers to express our beliefs and ideologies in the form of the narrative’s theme—what we mean to say!

What You Mean?

The message of your screenplay is what you hope it means to your audience, so you need to understand your purpose for telling this particular story. Once you understand that, its theme will become clear to the audience.

A literary theme is the main idea or underlying meaning a writer explores in a literary work. The plot of the story is how this theme is expressed. A writer’s theme often reveals the narrative, gives the characters a purpose and helps the audience stay tuned.

Keep in mind the theme has to be clear to more than just you. Make your theme evident to give your story more meaning. Most of us writers want to do more than simply entertain a theater of strangers. We want to use this art form to make an impact on society, to enlighten others. And even simply sway them to our ideology. The following list is reflective of common themes writers express in their narratives:

  1. Beauty of simplicity
  2. Change of power – necessity
  3. Change versus tradition
  4. Chaos and order
  5. Character – destruction, building up
  6. Circle of life
  7. Coming of age
  8. Communication – verbal and nonverbal
  9. Darkness and light
  10. Disillusionment and dreams1

My personal goal as a writer is to inspire change in my audience. I enjoy seeing the spark in the eyes or the excitement when my readers catch on to my story’s theme. (My current screenplay’s theme is humility versus power.)

Each time I start the writing process, I try to determine what I want to say to my audience —what change I’m hoping to cause.

Say What!

Not that I am the best, but the best writers know what they want to say before they began writing. The plot usually develops later in the process, even for outliners like me. Sometimes even the characters reveal themselves by what they really want to say.

Thus, knowing your them or message/message beforehand can help you write a better story in the writing process. One of the beauties of screenwriting is we get to utilize multiple senses, so we have more ways to express our store’s theme. We can say what we want without having to spell it out for our audiences. Below are a few of my favorite movies with clear themes we can see.

What message burns inside of your heart and drives you to write? Our job as storytellers is more than just entertaining. We have an opportunity to make an impact on countless lives when we know what we mean.

Martin Johnson survived a severe car accident with a (T.B.I.) Traumatic brain injury which left him legally blind and partially paralyzed on the left side. He is an award-winning Christian screenwriter who has recently finished his first Christian nonfiction book. Martin has spent the last nine years volunteering as an ambassador and promoter for Promise Keepers ministries. While speaking to local men’s ministries he shares his testimony. He explains The Jesus Paradigm and how following Jesus changes what matters most in our lives. Martin lives in a Georgia and connects with readers at Spiritual Perspectives of Da Single Guy and on Twitter at mtjohnson51.

1 https://lah.elearningontario.ca/CMS/public/exported_courses/EWC4U/exported/EWC4UU2/EWC4UU2A1/_teacher/A%20Huge%20List%20of%20Common%20Themes%20-%20Literary%20Devices.pdf

Categories
Screenwriting

Controlling Idea!

As the pandemic unfolded last year, a story concept I toyed with for years kept coming to mind, mainly because the conflict in the story dealt with the end of the world. And I wanted the hero of my story to be a protagonist with a disability or mental issue. So I had my controlling idea clearly planned out.

A story’s controlling idea should be obvious by the time we get to the narrative’s resolution. First, we need to understand what the controlling idea is not.

  • Plot
  • Theme
  • Message

However, these aspects of story can and should emerge from the story, particularly in the subtext of it. The bottom line is you should have a grasp of your controlling idea before you start writing the story.

Controlling Idea!

A controlling idea of the story should simply be a one sentence statement about the story’s meaning and how it is expressed through action, events and characters all the way through the story’s climax.

Think of it as an X marks the spot on a treasure map. It’s what we want in the end of the journey. Thus, the importance of the concept is undeniable. It will shape the message via guiding the plot and revealing our theme.

This helps writers to know why they are writing the story before the initial fade in. There are two parts of the controlling idea: the how and the why. Below are a few examples of how a controlling idea can produce a story’s theme.

  1. True strength isn’t always in might – humility.
  2. Love overcomes hate – the power of love.
  3. Good triumphs over evil – justice.
  4. Revenge doesn’t pay – forgiveness.
  5. Shallowness doesn’t last – find the meaning/purpose.
  6. Overcoming impossible odds – hope prevails.

David Trotter explains, “Give your movie some meaning. According to Patrick Sheane Duncan, ‘A movie is generally about one thing, one theme or idea, and every scene and every character is formed from that fountainhead’. … Each scene, and the conclusion in particular, points to the idea.”1

If we know and understand our story’s message, we should understand how the controlling idea will produce it. More importantly our audience should understand both concepts: what our theme is and why we feel that way. Your job as a writer is to make these clear.

One of the first writing “rules” I learned is to always think about the reader or audience first. Our stories or art aren’t just for us—they are a communication to others. Do your job well and make sure others will get it!

Get It?

We all go to movies for different reasons, but the fact is we expect to get something in return for the money we pay: entertainment, information, or to escape from reality.

The controlling idea needs to be obvious to the audience if we’re going to help them receive what they’re expecting. The controlling idea is the framework to sell our message effectively.

Robert McKee notes, “A controlling idea may be expressed in a single sentence describing how and why life undergoes change for one condition of existence at the beginning to another at the end.”2 Below are a few examples of movies for strong controlling ideas with emotional undertones.

Knowing your story’s message is important. As we start a new year, do you know your controlling idea?

Martin Johnson survived a severe car accident with a (T.B.I.) Traumatic brain injury which left him legally blind and partially paralyzed on the left side. He is an award-winning Christian screenwriter who has recently finished his first Christian nonfiction book. Martin has spent the last nine years volunteering as an ambassador and promoter for Promise Keepers ministries. While speaking to local men’s ministries he shares his testimony. He explains The Jesus Paradigm and how following Jesus changes what matters most in our lives. Martin lives in a Georgia and connects with readers at Spiritual Perspectives of Da Single Guy and on Twitter at mtjohnson51.

1  Trotter, D. (2019). Screenwriter’s Bible , Silman-James Press. Pg. 94.

2  Mckee, R.. (1997). Story , Harper-Collins e-books, Pg. 115.

Categories
Courting the Muse

How Academic Articles Can Help You Craft Your Frame Stories

Pilgrims travel to a martyr’s shrine, swapping stories on their journey to pass the time.

The freshly installed tenant of a rundown estate asks his housekeeper about the history of his troubled new home.

A sea captain writes to his sister about a disturbing encounter he had en route to the North Pole.

If you’ve got a taste for classic literature, you might recognize — in broad strokes, at least — the openings to some of English literature’s most notable works: The Canterbury Tales, Wuthering Heights, and Frankenstein. respectively.

All three of these classics show the power of frame stories at work. Also known as frame narratives, these introductory tales enclose another story (or set of stories), supporting and emphasizing them like gilded wood embracing a painting.

As you might have gathered from the examples above, a good frame story isn’t just a throat-clearing before the author begins to speak in earnest — a preamble to the story they really want to write.

For one thing, frame stories help orient the reader. Their protagonists are often as lost as we are, stumbling into astounding situations they don’t yet have the context to parse. The tenant arrives in the aftermath of Heathcliff and Cathy’s ruinous love; the sea captain rescues Dr. Frankenstein from the cold, long after the monster has already escaped his custody. As strangers to the scene, these baffled observers allow us to nestle into their curiosity and bewilderment, giving us a perspective to latch onto as we ease ourselves into the book.

Done right, frame narratives offer a way into the plots and characters they frame. But beyond that, they also offer occasions for storytelling — justification for each word that follows. Why am I reading this? What makes this important? These are the questions a good frame story will answer.

These days, I often find frame narratives in mystery novels and ghost stories, where they depict a naive outsider’s first encounters with the enigma at the heart of the work. But actually, I tend to stumble on my favorite frame narratives in a less intuitive genre: academic articles.

At its core, academic research isn’t unlike the plotting of mystery novels. The scholar-sleuth, encountering an ambiguity, undertakes an investigation. They work methodically through clues, subjecting them to rigorous analyses and synthesizing them through flashes of insight.

In my field of history, researchers don’t tend to present their findings in the form of conventional frame stories — that is, by narrating the discovery of their sources. However, historians often do deploy a rhetorical strategy that reminds me of the frame narrative at its best. In some of my favorite scholarly articles, the researcher begins with a punchy anecdote, a narrative that orients me to the concepts they’re working with and eases me into the analysis to come.

The book historian Susan Cherniack, for example, uses this technique with spare, elegant style in a classic 1994 study of textual transmission in Song China. The 120-page article opens on the striking story of “five [Song] woodblock-engravers who were struck by lightning after changing the texts of prescriptions in a medical book they had been engraving”. This startling one-liner gets right to the center of Cherniack’s inquiry: how texts change as they’re copied and circulated; which changes are “allowed” and which forbidden.

When Cherniack pulls this anecdote and places it at the beginning of her article, she’s crafting a narrative frame for her ideas, much like Mary Shelley opening Frankenstein on a sea captain’s rescue of a scientist. Cherniack doesn’t belabor her point — she moves on from this opening salvo quickly enough. But she does offer us a striking, narratively rich indication of why we should care about her study.

As fiction writers, we use our frame stories to introduce narrative, not argumentation. But examining how historians contextualize their arguments through storytelling can make us better storytellers too, by keeping frame stories compelling and tight.

Lucia Tang is a writer for Reedsy, a marketplace that connects self-publishing authors with the book industry’s best editors, designers, and marketers. To work on the site’s free historical character name generators, she draws on her knowledge of Chinese, Latin, and Old Irish —  learned as a PhD candidate in history at UC Berkeley. You can read more of her work on the Reedsy Discovery blog, or follow her on Twitter at @lqtang.

Categories
Talking Character

Confused Characters Who Don’t Confuse Readers

The trickiest part about conveying confusion is to convey it clearly, without confusing the reader.  Ann Hood in Creating Character Emotions

From time to time our characters will be confused about something. Perhaps they’ve made assumptions that suddenly turn out to be incorrect. Perhaps someone says or does something that doesn’t make sense. Perhaps another character is intentionally trying to confuse them.

Whatever the situation, the writer must take pains to make sure the reader know what’s going on, even when the character doesn’t.

Two common pitfalls when portraying confusion:

  1. Sensory overload. Hit a character with enough simultaneous noises and actions and they’ll certainly become confused. However, the reader will be just as befuddled by the mass of details.

Example: Halfway to the mailbox, Sara heard her ringtone and rushed inside. Where had she left the phone this time? She almost tripped on a shoe her son had left by the front door, which woke the dog and started him barking. Gritting her teeth, Sara ran past the stupid dog to the kitchen in time to see her two-year-old dump an open box of cereal onto the floor and break into wails.

A vivid portrayal of confusion, but the reader doesn’t understand what it means unless the writer also shows what emotions the chaos creates for Sandy.

  1. Information that is meaningless to the reader. When you confuse a character with information he doesn’t understand, make sure the reader has an inkling of what it means.

Example: Jared unfolded the piece of notebook paper. Who was K. and why had she stuffed a note in his locker? What did she mean by ‘see you after school at the tree’? Which tree? There were like a million trees in this neighborhood alone.

Unless your readers know more than Jared, they will be just as confused as he is.

[bctt tweet=”Don’t make the reader befuddled just because your character is. #writers ” username=””]

Better strategies for portraying confusion:

  1. Let the reader in on the joke. Characters often mistakenly believe an action or comment means one thing, when in fact it means something else. Readers, however, don’t enjoy being purposely led astray, so make sure the reader is aware (or at least suspects) that the character is making a mistake. In example two above, imagine how much better it would work if the reader knows that K’s friend has the locker next to Jared’s. Now, instead of making the same mistake Jared makes, the reader will grin in anticipation for the awkward scenario to follow.
  2. Show the emotional source of the confusion. What readers really want to understand is why a character acts the way she does. I might improve example one by adding some of the emotions underlying the confusion, like this:

Example: Halfway to the mailbox, Sara heard her ringtone. Why did she always forget to put her phone back in her pocket? She hurried inside and almost tripped on a shoe her son had left by the front door. Uh oh. It wasn’t her turn to pick up the kids, was it? She couldn’t afford to forget again. She rushed into the kitchen. Thank the Lord, only one-fifteen. So who was calling at this hour? Had she forgotten an appointment?

  1. Show the character’s thought process as he tries to make sense of things. As the character works through a situation that doesn’t make sense, he naturally portrays confusion without the writer ever having to say as much.

Example: Jared unfolded the piece of notebook paper. Who was K. and why had she stuffed a note in his locker? Kayla was the only girl he knew whose name started with K, and she would never use sparkly pink ink. Maybe someone meant to put it in Tori’s locker instead? But how was he supposed find out? There was no way he was going to show the note to a girl as popular as Tori.

[bctt tweet=”Confused characters. We love them, just so long as they don’t confuse us, too. #amwriting” username=””]

[bctt tweet=”Pitfalls to avoid when writing portraying confused characters. #writetips #writer” username=””]

 

Categories
Write Justified

The Common Comma – Part 3

 

Bryan Garner, author of A Dictionary of Modern American Usage, and a raft of other books on English language usage and style, calls the comma the least emphatic punctuation mark of all. While it may not have the impact of a period or semi-colon, marks that call for a full stop or pause, the comma’s primary role is a separator. And when it comes to clarity, that’s an important role.

Garner identifies nine uses for a comma. We’ve covered

We’ll finish this series with Garner’s final five.

  • Qualifying adjectives

When more than one adjective is describing a noun, separate them with commas if both can be true of the noun.

John’s worn, red sweater won the award for the company’s annual Ugly Christmas Sweater contest.

Since John’s sweater is both worn and red, the qualifying adjectives are separated with a comma. Note the tip here. If the comma could be replaced with and, the comma is needed.

When the adjectives describe the noun in different ways, or one adjective describes the other no comma is needed.

Repainting the bright pink walls was the first item on the new homeowners to do list.

Bright modifies pink, not walls. No comma.

  • Direct vs. indirect speech

When writing dialogue, use a comma to separate direct speech from indirect speech.

“My goodness,” Marjorie exclaimed, “look how that child has grown.”

  • Participial phrase

Introductory participial phrases are set off with a comma.

Famished after their ten-mile hike, the scouts lined up early for dinner.

Waiting for the bank to open, Margaret caught up on Facebook.

No comma is needed if the sentence is inverted and the phrase immediately precedes the verb.

Facing down the monster was the prince himself.

  • Salutation

I know it’s becoming a lost art—letter writing—that is. But should you have occasion to write a note or informal letter, insert a comma after the salutation. Dear John, Dear Sally,

That’s not a bad practice to carry over into those emails you dash off, either.

  • Parts of an address

Separate the elements of an address, as well as dates, when they are run in the text.

The package was shipped to 758 Potter Street, Hamlin, Missouri, by mistake.

The Declaration of Independence was signed on July 3, 1776, not July 4.

Punctuation, like language itself, evolves over time. What was once a preference for more commas— “close” style, has given way to an “open” approach using fewer commas. Some have gone as far as saying, “When in doubt, leave it out.” Keep in mind that[bctt tweet=” the whole reason we use punctuation is to make our writing as clear as possible” username=””]. You’ll be on the right path if you adhere to Bryan’s nine uses.