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You know what would be crazy? Just deciding to skip punctuation.

Cormac McCarthy, the bestselling and Pulitzer-winning author of books like No Country For Old Men, The Road, and Blood Meridian, famously didn't like quotation marks, felt they cluttered the page, and so he didn't use them.

When dialogue happens in his novels, there are no quotes around it, and you as the reader just have to figure out when a line is narration or dialogue. He also didn't use semicolons or exclamation points or certain other forms of punctuation. While he didn't exclude commas entirely, he did minimize them, and instead used extra "ands" in place of where many other authors would use commas. He used periods normally.

His prose isn't my cup of tea, but there's no denying his success, and it goes to show that you can kind of just do things.

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Interesting, did not know that. 🤔

The Road is one of my all-time favorite books. The fact that he doesn't use quotation marks enhances the flow and allows for a deeper connection with the story.

I prefer hyphens - all sorts of them -—– punctuation in all languages gets so complicated if you deal with more that one language. My take is: it’s all about communication. It should be all about people understanding each other. 💥

fabula220 · 8w

Seems the matter went well for him…

scrolls of ancient wisdom · 8w

James Joyce would approve

Those details of punctuation are for rhythm. Not using quotation marks around dialogue forces the reader to pay closer attention to the nuances of the characters' voices and of course is much more difficult for the writer

Daniel Tapa · 8w

Jose Saramago has a similar style, in Blindness there are pages without a single punctuation

Just makes it harder to understand. Similar to when writers use slang, a few years down the track it becomes hard to understand what they were saying as the slang has moved on.

I read gargantua and pantagruel. it would say quoth panurge, some stuff panurge said.

II’m not a fan of quotation marks either—especially those silly air-quote finger gestures in spoken language when the speaker wants to signal ironic distance. I’ve replaced them with a prefatory and a trailing “höhö” (-:

John Satsman · 8w

DO you keep a (public?) list of everything that you read like Derek Sivers does. I think it would be interesting. https://sive.rs/book

Umberto Eco had similar takes, especially on exclamation marks and the use of three dots at the end of a sentence. He used to say that feeling the need for either means your sentence is too weak.

Chappy4756 · 8w

McCarthy does that Joyce-like beautiful rambling except he’s far more brutal and doesn’t make up as many words for rhythmic prose. I enjoy both

Please no! Nothing anoys me more than needing to read a sentece 3 times, only because someone did not bother with commas.

“Hurricane season “ by Fernanda Melchor is a book that has almost no punctuation and in the beginning is super weird to read. I am native Spanish reader and enjoyed it like very few books I have read. Just looked up the English translation and it appears it is very good and faithful to the style...

BitcoinBookHODL · 8w

I have a friend who I believe wrote an entire book without any punctuation. I have a copy but have not read it. He did it as a creative writing project and had it published. He gave it to me in 2008 so he was just doing things long ago. It’s in storage until next week but I will take a look. I nee...

I like using punctuation. It’s like a language game in itself. I don’t really care about using it correctly more than I care about my words being interpreted as I mean them. So I suppose no punctuation could be a good way of achieving that angle. I don’t know though.

Kevin Alfred Strom · 8w

Lack of proper punctuation can lead to serious misunderstandings. "Let's eat, Jerry." "Let's eat Jerry." "How do you do, Sally?" "How do you do Sally?" And the infamous "Eats shoots and leaves." vs. "Eats, shoots, and leaves." I suppose an excellent writer could display his skill by still convey...

@Rawhide4btc · 8w

Last Exit to Brooklyn by Hubert Selby jr. A gritty, raunchy post WWII novel with interesting punctuation.

Kevin Alfred Strom · 8w

"At the embassy party I introduced my fiancée to my parents, Donald Trump, and Lyn Alden." "At the embassy party I introduced my fiancée to my parents Donald Trump and Lyn Alden."

Grace and Truth · 8w

I kinda agree with him on quotation marks. My KJV Bibles don't use them - the capitals and comments around the quotes are plenty to show what's happening. Of course the red letter sections are clear for that reason too. In a novel with more dialogue, they do sometimes help make it clearer, but then ...

In Japanese, you also skip white space between words. And somehow it works.

GrunkleBitcoin · 8w

I don’t think this style would work well in comics. pow boom Would make me yawn

Don't forget All the Pretty Horses.

The most valuable thing I learned in college English: all of the writing English rules you learned in school was just a suggestion; the real challenge is writing for understanding, whether you break those rules or 'nah' (one of my enlightenment moments).

MSDarkPsych · 7w

People who go against the current achieve success because they: think alone while others imitate stand alone while others beg for approval pay now while others delay

Language is an open-source system. You can just soft fork from the way it is commonly used.

I use voice so much that punctuation does not always happen and it isn’t good. I usually have to re-say what I need to say.

My English professor emphasized that on social media punctuation and grammar do not have to be used as it’s just a conversation among people. We don’t use grammar when conversing with people.

LeviJohnson.net · 7w

Language is tool that takes on more power and meaning the closer it aligns with reality.

Auveki - Ecology of Bitcoin · 7w

Incredible idea. Seems obvious, but the academic publishers are going shit big-time if this becomes a thing.