I’m not finished

Observe, if you will, the first sentence.

And the second, for that matter.

Tara had a couple of rather persnickety English teachers during her high school career who would candidly point out to me Tara’s seeming inability to write a simple sentence, for she would use commas and semi-colons and colons to make her point without taking a breath and the ‘period,’ as it were, was a rare find in her one-page essays, causing me no shortage of embarrassment, I assure you, for I knew she had inherited this English-teacher-frustrating trait from none-other than her beloved mother, that being me, it so happens; and so, while I wanted her to do well and excel in writing and possess a great mastery of the language arts, I also understood, while said teachers obviously did not, that Tara is a master communicator, well able to make not only her point, but to make it in such an interesting way that an overuse of the period-as-punctuation is not necessary, but rather over-used in our short-attention-spanned society.  Sad.  Very sad, indeed.

The period-punctuation gives people too many opportunities to escape my words.  I am most likely not finished.  So don’t try getting away.

  

The book is inscribed inside as having been owned by one Mr. Harry Story of Great Falls and is dated 5/13/12 – almost exactly 98 years ago!  Image on the right has in quotes: “Is it because we are merely attractive that you mentioned the relationship?”  *smile…

The book page pictured (top) is Japonette (c) 1912, by Robert W. Chambers [1865-1933].  I feel a strong affinity toward his sentence style.  I don’t think. we. need. as. many. periods. as. they. tell. us.  I say let’s make people stay in there until the point emerges!  Yes.  I do.   Especially since sometimes, yes, I wander and the point may seem way down the road.  It is coming.  Wait for it.  I will make it.  I promise.  Eventually.  But not too soon. 

N O T E :By the way?  Tara was an A student in English.  No worries.  And when she writes?  She writes well.  I think it was the one year I homeschooled her.  Yes.  I believe I will.  Take the credit.  For the lack of periods.  And how good.  She is.  Period.

“Presently she caught his eye and made him a pretty gesture.”

“‘I wonder just how innocent we really are,’ she said.”

MORE ABOUT THE BOOK:  I actually bought it at a used book store in Montana because it was illustrated by none other than Charles Dana Gibson [1867-1944]  himself, the great “Gibson-girl” illustrator, whose glorious images of curvaceous, bold women with nonchalantly up-swept yet-tumbling-tendriled hair, make me glad to be womanly.

5 thoughts on “I’m not finished

  1. I was also corrected in school for my “run-on” sentences(I think they were pure poetry)…but I do use a lot of periods now. To get my point across. And make what I’m saying sound more important. My English teachers have caused me to swing the other way and put too much punctuation. Oh well. I like how I write regardless:)

  2. I believe that if anyone has the capacity to appreciate the run-on sentence it would be the magnificent beauty that I called my wife some twenty-nine years ago now when we were but young lovers strolling the grass lined paths of the campus of higher learning in the upper parts of the Dakotas which made its home in a town that they slated as “Not the end of the world, but you could see it from there” and it being such a place that no one in their right mind would simply stumble across but had to deliberately, on their way to the cold waste land that is Minot, ND, make a conscious effort to arrive at even if they indeed were expecting to find adventure therein; but yet it could be said that if one had the proclivity to assert themselves with these type of sentences, they could find themselves weaving a rich tapestry not unlike one of my favorite authors and inspirations, Charles Dickens who, being the master of the scribed word that he was, did indeed not dabble in the perfunctory minutia that one would have thought or even imagined that should take place at the turn of the century; but instead was quite adept at letting us know exactly, in no uncertain terms, so as not to wonder what was the best of times were as opposed to the worst of times.

  3. Haha! I am still a run-on sentence type of girl. I actually use way more exclamation points than periods. I think most people see that I say everything very passionately. Hunter told me the other day that I was getting too loud in my excitement over teaching him the letter, “M”!! Thanks for noting that I was still an “A” student momma;)

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