From the course: Writing with Flair: How to Become an Exceptional Writer

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Excessive punctuation

Excessive punctuation

From the course: Writing with Flair: How to Become an Exceptional Writer

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Excessive punctuation

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- Another type of unnecessary ceremony is overusing punctuation. It sometimes happens because people aren't confident enough maybe in their use of punctuation and so end up over compensating. Very good writers are usually quite minimalistic in their approach to punctuation using it only where it's necessary for either clarity or for elegance. If you take the same approach to punctuation as that you'll probably use it better than most people. The biggest problem tends to be with the use of commas and you can often find writing littered with unnecessary commas. Now, the rules around comma placement can get very complex and promise you I'm no expert on them, so I'm not gonna bore you with that but I try to stick to using commas, myself, in a common sensical way that either keeps my meaning crisp or helps me to add a touch of elegance to my writing. Some people however, use a comma for every possible pause they imagine is present in the writing and that approach makes, for me, a lot of…

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