Although commas and periods account for more than eighty percent of all punctuation marks, students who want to learn to write must know how to use internal punctuation marks other than commas. To discover how useful colons, dashes, parentheses, and semicolons are in contemporary American prose, I studied their use in a WEAP (Well Edited American Prose) standard---the New York Times.

I first examined an issue of the Sunday Magazine section (April 22, 2001), using four of the regular columns and one randomly chosen long article. Next, I studied six Sunday book reviews from the same issue. Finally, I analyzed seven articles that began on the front page of a daily issue (April 20, 2001). Here are the results.

Although the dash and colon are far more popular than the other two marks, there is considerable variation from writer to writer. For example, of the nineteen semicolons in the book reviews, nine are from the same article. Similarly, of the twenty-three dashes, ten are from one review, and of the twenty-two colons, eleven are from another review. The range is interesting, too. One book reviewer used a total of just five of these internal punctuation marks; another used twenty-three---in articles roughly similar in length.

To obtain what I thought would be an even more representative sample, I next analyzed articles from the "Writers on Writing" series, published in the New York Times. In this series, writers comment on a wide range of issues related to writing. Many of the authors are mainly fiction writers, but of course these essays are nonfiction. I began with the column that appeared on the day the idea occurred to me---April 23, 2001---and went back ten columns to 12/18/00. Here is a summary of that research.

Here, the utility of colons, dashes, and parentheses stands out even more. The semicolon finishes a distant fourth.

Again, individual variation stands out. Amy Tan and Donald Westlake use very few of these internal punctuation marks, whereas David Shields and Susan Sontag use a great many. (The highest average use is actually by Divakaruni and Shields, as you can see from the last column.) Susan Sontag is a heavy user of dashes; Shields, of colons. Over a third of all the semicolons are used by one writer, Rosellen Brown.

To develop modern punctuation skills in our students, we must teach colons, dashes, and parentheses. All appear to be used notably more frequently than semicolons. Indeed, in this survey, dashes and colons are used nearly twice as often.

As a mark of punctuation, the colon is one of the oldest, going back to the Greeks. At one time, the colon was the main medial mark between the comma and the period. When the semicolon came into use, the sequence ran from comma, through semicolon, to colon, and period, as we have noted earlier.

Gradually, the colon was set aside for special uses, and the semicolon took over as the main medial pause. In more recent times, however, uses of the colon have multiplied. In spite of this, the typical handbook spends far more time on the semicolon than the colon. In the 1998 Harbrace College Handbook, for example, the colon is given about six lines (apart from trivia, such as its uses in salutations of letters or indications of time), whereas the semicolon merits about four pages.

I first teach that the colon calls attention to what follows. It means or implies: as follows, the following, or namely/that or which is. (When a writer actually uses these terms, the colon is also called for.) Here are some examples:

Bring me the following: your tired, your hungry, and your sick. ["the following" is stated]

Bring me: your tired, your hungry, and your sick. ["the following" is implied]

I have three requests, namely: your silence, attention, and patience. ["namely" is stated]

I have three requests: your silence, attention, and patience. ["namely" is implied]

GOAL: To introduce the most general use of the colon as an announcer of what follows.

A. Duplicate, write on the chalkboard, or make a transparency of the following real-life uses of the colon. (Where brackets appear, the author used a colon. You may prefer simply to leave an extra space.)

1. There were five slices [ ] red cabbage, onions, leeks, carrots, and turnips. (Tracy Chevalier)

2. But this figure did not take into account what is currently happening in the country where data about anything has traditionally been notoriously difficult to come by [ ] China. (David Crystal)

3. We must recognize first that the term "summary" is used to cover at least four different types of writing [ ] the synopsis, the abstract, the precis, and the paraphrase. (Mina Shaughnessy)

4. The men on the Corner were honorable drinking men, with their own code of ethics [ ] A man's word was his bond, you never insulted anyone's woman, . . . . (James McBride)

5. Inside [the British Museum] you'll find some of the greatest relics of humankind: the Elgin Marbles, the Rosetta Stone [ ] everything, it seems, but the Ark of the Covenant. (Fodor's 2001: Great Britain)

6. Yammering about standards, of course, has a political purpose [ ] It shifts responsibility and perpetrates a fraud. (Susan Ohanian)

7. But perfection has one grave defect [ ] it is apt to be dull. (Somerset Maugham)

8. If I have learned from my times, I know something of the future [ ] It will rain again, on the world and on The Times. (Max Frankel)

9. It was impossible to decide otherwise than he had done [ ] he must see Madame Olenska himself rather than let her secrets be bared to other eyes. (Edith Wharton)

10. And she said [ ] "Do not ask, I beg you." (A. S. Byatt)

11. Here's a good rule to remember about rattlesnakes and scorpions [ ] if you don't bother them, they won't both you. (Louis Sachar)

12. . . . it was full of all sorts of things that you find in barns [ ] ladders, grindstones, pitch forks, monkey wrenches, scythes, lawn mowers, snow shovels, ax handles, milk pails, water buckets, empty grain sacks, and rusty rat traps. (E. B. White)

B. Ask the students whether they can fit as follows, the following, namely, or that or which is/are/was/were into the first of the two sentences, suggesting that if they can, the best punctuation where the brackets appear is a colon. Here are possible answers:

1. . . . the following five slices . . . .

2. . . . to come by namely . . . .

3. . . . at least the following four . . . .

4. . . . code of ethics, namely . . . .

5. . . . humankind, as follows . . . .

6. . . . has the following political purpose . . . .

7. . . . one grave defect, namely

8. . . . something of the future, which is . . . .

9. . . . than he had done, namely . . . .

10. . . . she said the following . . . .

11. Here's [the following is] a good rule

12. . . . things that you find in barns, as follows or namely

Apart from conventional situations---such to separate hour from minute, chapter from verse, title from subtitle, and after a salutation in business letters---textbooks typically list the following uses of the colon:

1. Before a list of items

2. Before a long, formal statement or quotation

3. Between independent clauses when the second explains or restates the idea of the first

Colons indeed may be employed in these situations, but they are not necessarily the only marks used. A list may be introduced by a dash rather than a colon, and Quirk et al maintained three decades ago that "one will find the colon replaced by a comma at many points where a list is clearly to follow" (1972, p. 1067).

The second use is so commonly taught for student research papers that it is almost unthinkable---to students and their teachers---that any other mark could be correct. In the sample student research papers in Harbrace, for example, it is the mark used in six of the seven possible places, and I believe the seventh case is a proofreading error (no punctuation at all is used).

In good contemporary writing, however, long, formal statements or quotations are introduced in all sorts of ways. In a "Centerpiece" article in the Atlantic Monthly, for example, Simon Winchester introduces his three lengthy indented quotes twice by a comma and once by a period. In an article in The English Journal, three successive indented series of bulleted items are introduced by a colon, no punctuation at all, and a period, respectively (Rebecca Bowers Sipe, May, 2001, pp. 36--37). Usage is changing.

The third "rule"---the notion that the colon is used "between independent clauses when the second explains or restates the idea of the first"---is an extremely limited view of what modern practice actually is. First of all, there is no need at all for both of the clauses to be "independent." It is quite common to find uses like these:

To sum up: the classical words adopted since the Renaissance have enriched the English language very greatly and have especially increased its number of synonyms. (Otto Jespersen)

One possible drawback: When you do die, the beneficiary gets the money immediately. (Jane Bryant Quinn)

Woodrow hovered, feeling threatened, which was how he felt whenever he entered her house: a country boy come to town. (John le Carre)

Well-known fact: In neither K-12 nor college English are systematic SWE [Standard Written English] grammar and usage much taught anymore. (David Foster Wallace)

In addition, the part of a sentence after a colon may do many more things besides explaining or restating the idea of the first part. Here is a list of colon uses taken from The Concise Oxford Companion to the English Language (p. 215), with its own examples:

• To introduce an antithesis/highlight a contrast.

He died young: but he died rich.

They spoke bitterly: and yet they were forgiving.

I called: you did not answer.

He arrived: he knocked at the door: we waited: he went away

a. introduction to theme

I want to say this: we are deeply grateful to all of you.

b. statement to example

It was not easy: to begin with, I had to find the right house.

c. cause to effect

The weather was bad: so we stayed at home.

d. premise to conclusion

There are hundreds of wasps in the garden: there must be a nest there.

e. statement to explanation

I gave up: I had tried everything without success.

Students needn't memorize rules for the use of the colon: what is important is that they experiment and begin to appreciate what a fine tool in their punctuation kit it can be. It's liberating. To help students appreciate this, let them do colon searches on their own, bring examples to class, and discuss them.

Here are a few offbeat examples that we have discovered. How might you---or your students---characterize these uses? (Use the Concise Oxford Companion list above as a base, if you wish.)

1. . . . but he couldn't complain either: the wound had healed beautifully. (T. Coraghessan Boyle)

2. . . . he buttonholed me to talk about the guided Everest expedition he was planning: I should come along, he cajoled, and write an article about the climb for Outside. (Jon Krakauer)

3. "What if I am a pioneer, or even a genius?" Answer: then be one. (E. B. White)

4. If there's justice in the world, he'll rattle some cages. I know: big if. (David Gates)

5. Woodrow meanwhile was again visibly consulting his memory: bringing his eyebrows together in an amused and rueful frown. (John le Carre)

6. Notice that, by this definition, there is no fun in literacy: reading a novel, a magazine, or a poem doesn't count. (Gerald W. Bracey)

7. The fonts in all the churches are dry. I run my fingers through the dusty scallops of marble: not a drop for my hot forehead. (Frances Mayes)

8. So, indeed, Peter Mark Roget, physician, chess genius, expert on bees, phrenology, and the kaleidoscope: for all your noble ideals and Aristotelian logic, your book [Roget's Thesaurus] offers comfort only to the few . . . . (Simon Winchester)

9. Strawberry fields, milkmaids, a water conduit to supply London's needs, roadside inns: these were the Sunday afternoon joys of a walk in Islington for more than two centuries. (Gillian Tindall)

10. It was, of course, a miserable childhood: the happy childhood is hardly worth your while. (Frank McCourt)

11. Or, perhaps, another way of thinking of it: this woman, who has never held a job for any time, doesn't get up in the mornings, is routinely three or four hours late for appointments, . . . (Bill Buford)

As you can see from many of these sentences, the colon is a tool of compression, often replacing a connective or preposition, such as by or because. Indeed, it may often replace a good deal more, as in the fourth example above ("I know that that is a big if"). In the eleventh sentence, it replaces the verb is.

We English teachers have long taught that no punctuation should be used before a list or quote when the list or quote itself is a complement of the verb. But this practice is not always followed:

The Oxford English Dictionary says that religion is: Belief in, reverence for, and desire to please, a divine ruling power. . . . (Reynolds Price)

For example, if the numbers read aloud were: 1, 2, 3, and 4, the answers would be 3, 5, and 7. (Education Week)

. . . it is exciting to reread . . . of this noble theme. It goes: "Vigorous writing is concise . . . ." (E. B. White)

You know what charm is: a way of getting the answer yes without having asked any clear question. (Albert Camus)

The dash has always been suspect among traditionalists, who perhaps fear that once students meet it, they will use it everywhere. The 1998 Harbrace Handbook employs a special icon and the word caution printed in color and capital letters, warning students: "Use dashes sparingly." (Emily Dickinson apparently never read that advice.) But if students are denied dashes, they will have to punctuate differently than real-world writers.

In fact, even in top-flight literary magazines, dashes are used much more frequently than any other internal mark of punctuation, except for the comma. (E. B. White used five more dashes in his 1979 Introduction to The Elements of Style than he did in his 1959. The pieces are similar in length.)

Let's examine why the dash is an effective weapon.

To begin, we accept the principle that clarity is promoted when subjects are close to their verbs and verbs are close to their complements. However, when a writer wishes to include more than one proposition within a given sentence, it has to be placed somewhere. Consider these two propositions.

The batter hit a home run.

She had two strikes on her.

How would you express these within the same sentence? Standard composition advice suggests that one make a dependent clause out of the second sentence and place it either before or after the main clause:

A. Although she had two strikes on her, the batter hit a home run.

B. The batter hit a home run, although she had two strikes on her.

The advantage of both of these is that the key words batter, hit, and home run remain close to one another. But are there disadvantages as well? The A version holds us up a long time before we reach the main action---or even know who she is. The B version suggests that the fact that the batter had two strikes on her is an afterthought. (I'm assuming that my readers know that it's much more difficult to hit a home run when one is batting with two strikes.)

On the other hand, I suspect that most readers would prefer either the A or the B version to these:

C. The batter, although she had two strikes on her, hit a home run.

D. The batter hit, although she had two strikes on her, a home run.

The problem with these is obvious---they do not follow the principle of keeping the subject close to its verb and the verb to its complement. In C, the reader, focused on the batter, has to read seven words before he finds out what the batter did. D needs no commentary: it's hard to imagine anyone actually writing it.

However, look what a writer can do with a some word deletion and a pair of dashes:

E. The batter---with two strikes on her---hit a home run.

F. The batter hit---with two strikes on her---a home run.

Yes, there is still a holdup between subject and verb, or verb and complement, but the dashes (plus word deletion) make the meaning easier to grasp visually. Furthermore, unlike A and B, E and F put proper emphasis on the critical clause that the batter accomplished her feat with two strikes. Nothing is new in this. Writers have been using dashes effectively for a very long time. Here are two century-plus-old examples. The first is Henry James. See how his dash pair creates a less intrusive break between subject and verb than some other structures might have:

Very few Americans---indeed I think none---had ever seen this lady, about whom there were some singular stories.

And here is Stephen Crane, using a dash to emphasize a series of modifiers:

Perhaps there was to him a divinity expressed in the voice of the other—-stern, hard, with no reflection of fear in it.

GOAL: To help students appreciate the various placements and effects that can be achieved by the use of dashes.

A. Duplicate, write on the chalkboard, or make a transparency of the following effective uses of the dash in well wrought sentences.

1. All the basic skills of composition---outlining, organizing ideas, using the library---are fully presented. (John E. Warriner)

2. "O God!" I screamed, and "O God!" again and again; for there before my eyes---pale and shaken, and half fainting, and groping before him with his hands, like a man restored from death---there stood Henry Jekyll! (Robert Louis Stevenson)

3. These criteria determine his [Lindley Murray's] rules on the position of the relative clause---it should follow its antecedent immediately---and on that of the adverb. (Emma Vorlat)

4. And to retake control we need a new perspective---here called uncommon sense---on the nature of the problems we face . . . . (John S. Mayher)

5. I hope that Portrait of America remains as balanced as ever, for it offers samplings of virtually every kind of history---men's and women's, black and white, social and cultural, political and military, urban and economic, national and local---so that students can appreciate the rich diversity of the American experience. (Stephen B. Oates)

6. Suddenly machine-gun bullets hit a whitewashed building in front of me---and a long line of holes instantly appeared, just like stitches when the thread is yanked out fast. (Amy Tan)

7. Of all the visions of the Grandfathers the greatest is this: To seek the high concord, a man looks not deeper within---he reaches farther out. (William Least Heat Moon)

8. Thus, a brief description, a brief book review, a brief account of a single incident, a narrative merely outlining an action, the setting forth of a single idea---any one of these is best written in a single paragraph. (William Strunk, Jr. and E. B. White)

9. She came in with a smile---smiled all the time of her visit, except when she laughed, and smiled when she went away. (Jane Austen)

10. Keith was fifteen years old and this was one of the easiest of the Dr. Seuss books---not near the level of sophistication of, say, Cat in the Hat. (Susan Ohanian)

11. Above all---we were wet. (Frank McCourt)

12. Vouchers vanished, and school choice was limited to public schools---cold comfort for many children trapped in urban school systems. Even Mr. Bush's signature education proposal---to test every child from third to eighth grade---may be at risk. (William Bennett and Chester Finn, Jr.)

B. Of particular interest in the above sentences is where the dashes occur and what alternatives they replace. Here are some observations on these:

1. Break between complete subject ("all the basic skills of composition") and the predicate.

2. Break between an adverb ("there") and the sentence of which it is part ("there stood Henry Jekyll"). Note that Stevenson repeats the adverb, for clarity and emphasis.

3. Break between two noun phrases joined by and ("the relative clause" and "the adverb").

4. Break between a complement ("perspective") and a prepositional phrase ("on the nature") modifying it.

5. Break between a sentence and an adverbial clause modifying it.

6. Used instead of a comma before the conjunction and.

7. Used instead of the coordinating conjunction but.

8. Used to mark the end of a series of appositives (of "these") and the beginning of a sentence.

9. Used instead of a comma, in a compound predicate.

10. Used instead of a comma before a negation.

11. Used between a sentence fragment and a full sentence.

12. Break between subject and predicate---in the second sentence.

Most textbooks say that parentheses are used for "material of minor importance" or "nonessential matter."Harbrace warns "Use parentheses sparingly" (1998, p. 228). But who is to say whether a bit of information is essential or not? Essential to whom? for what reason? In a grammatical sense, all appositives and all adjective clauses that have been set off by commas (nonrestrictive) are nonessential. Should we use them "sparingly"?

The reality is that there are many good uses for parentheses, considerably more than I have space to catalogue. Here are a few:

1. Especially in technical material, a common use of parentheses is to clarify, define, or illustrate a term. Here are some examples from the book, The Yard, by Michael S. Sanders, which discusses building a destroyer at the Bath (Maine) Iron Works:

. . . not yet even put out a request for proposals (RFP)

various drawings that describe the ship deck by deck (the scantling plan)

MAPP (Methyl Acetylene Propadiene) gas flows through the torch head

. . . overall descriptions of . . . every hull plate, their thickness and where they are attached to each other (called a shell expansion)

These run through a thrust bearing (which absorbs the thrust of the turning screws) to the seventeen-foot-tall propellers.

This use of parentheses is often found in research papers.

2. Parentheses may simply be an alternative to some other way of expressing oneself. Here, for instance, is part of a recipe from Under the Tuscan Sun:

Meanwhile, in another pot, heat 5-1/2 cups of seasoned stock (chicken, veal, or vegetable) and 1/2 cup of white wine to a boil. . . . (p. 131)

The author might have written:

Meanwhile, in another pot, heat 5-1/2 cups of chicken, veal, or vegetable stock and 1/2 cup of white wine to a boil.

Does it really matter which of the two the writer chooses?

3. Oftentimes, it may indeed be "unnecessary" for a writer to include a detail that she has placed in parentheses, yet it may nevertheless have a gracious function:

. . . its [the Council of Trent's] decrees became Church doctrine through a series of Papal bulls (so named for the bulla, or round lead seal, affixed to pronouncements from the pope himself). (Dava Sobel)

Frankly, I've heard and known the meaning of the expression "Papal bull" most of my life. I've also wondered about the origin of the term. Now I know, and am grateful to Dava Sobel for telling me.

4. The parentheses may be effectively used when one parenthetical remark is embedded within another:

. . . if you happen to enter the same word in the thesaurus that comes with Microsoft Word (but which is made under contract by a firm with the name---somewhat less than encouraging for lexicographers---Soft- Art Inc.), you will be obligingly informed that . . . . (Simon Winchester)

5. Still another use is illustrated in the following quote, from James McBride's The Color of Water:

I had dropped off my ex-girlfriend, Karen, a black model who renamed herself Karone ("My agent told me to do it") at her grandmother's house in Petersburg.

Here the parentheses seem more effective than a pair of dashes. Of course, it's not essential that the reader know why Karen renamed herself, but wouldn't you agree that it adds a bit of texture?

6. Finally, parentheses may be used to inject humor, as in the following:

Appendix A at the back of the book lists usage problems and solutions that most writers and readers regard as valid. (In other words, usage problems and solutions that seem valid to me.) (Joe Glaser)

The material in parentheses is certainly not essential, but for a reader who finds books on style dull, it may be a welcome relief.

Here's an example, from the New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd:

He [a TV character, Micky] is also fantasizing about cheating with his comely new assistant, who flatters Micky by saying, "I've read quite a few of your columns and I think you are very, very talented." (That line always works on me.) (7/25/01, p. A17)

Naturally, any given writer---whether professional or student---is free to use parentheses or not, but it is a mistake to assume that they should necessarily be used "sparingly." In her article "Mail," Anne Fadiman used twelve parentheses (and only five semicolons). The article was printed in The American Scholar, which Ms. Fadiman edits, and was republished in The Best American Essays of 2001.

Goal: To help students see that parentheses can be used effectively, in numerous ways.

Procedure. Duplicate, write on chalkboard, or make a transparency of the following sentences, each of which contains an expression in parentheses. Let students discuss their purpose and effectiveness. A particularly good question to ask is whether the information is minor or nonessential. Share findings.

1. Extensive use of the slash to indicate that either of two terms is applicable (as in and/or, he/she) can make writing choppy. (John C. Hodges)

2. . . . if they paid their way with 1,000 smuggled English pounds (about $5,000) each. (Max Frankel)

3. Even in the twentieth century, they [runes] can be found in tales of mystery and imagination (such as the work of J. R. R. Tolkein). (David Crystal)

4. Here he sat . . . timing his exploration by the library clock and the faint constriction of his belly. (Coffee is not to be had in the London Library.) (A. S. Byatt)

5. The recently deceased Penelope Fitzgerald is much cited by Byatt, as the author of a rare kind of historical fiction (short, diffident, but rich in resonance), and before her there was Anthony Burgess . . . . (John Updike)

6. We are more familiar with essays resembling trains that huff and puff a lot but never seem to get out of the station. (At this moment, for instance, I am worrying about whether my own engine has enough power to make it up the gentle slope we are presently climbing.) (Robert Scholes)

7. In 1877 Samuel Clemens (Mark Twain) delivered a humorous speech telling an imaginary story of three great contemporary poets . . . . (Jean Malmstrom)

8. . . . to wait patiently for their eventual rescue in the form of graduation (if applicable), college (ditto), a job (in Empire Falls?), marriage (implausible) or death (finally). (Richard Russo)

9. [The stunned silence] was soon broken by a great cheer . . . . Lo lop es mort! (The wolf is dead!) (Stephen O'Shea)

10. The masons simply moved around the perimeter of the cupola on ponti (narrow platforms made from willow withes and supported on wooden rods inserted into the masonry). (Ross King)

11. With the crowds waiting in line, it was almost like a holiday, and I would sell three times as many of my boiled peanuts as usual. (Selling peanuts was my summer job.) (Jimmy Carter)