Punctuation and Pandas

In my twenties, I taught English to sixth graders in Seattle, along with other subjects. Once I started traveling, I taught English as a second language in an Australian girls' school located in a Greek community. During the latter experience, I had students who couldn't speak English at all and I couldn't speak Greek! I had to use students as interpreters - not the best way to teach, but we had fun and who knew if they were learning English or some strange hybrid.

Over the years, my writing has become pretty casual. Okay, truth be known - it's downright sloppy sometimes, particularly my punctuation. To comma or not to comma - that is the question. How about using italics instead of quotes? And starting sentences with "And".  Dashes - oh, how I love dashes!

Because of this blog, I decided it was time to clean up my act and take some writing courses. I signed up for a continuing education class at Pierce College called, Freelance Writing for Magazines. Do I fancy myself as a freelance writer? No, but I thought the course looked interesting, I had time on Wednesday evenings, and I'd taken another class from the instructor.

Diane Mettler is a freelance editor, story editor, and writer. She is also a screenwriter with a Hallmark movie, Growing the Big One, to her credit. Click on http://biznik.com/members/diane-mettler to learn more about her. I took a blogging class from Diane and her husband last fall and here I am, blogging along.

This class is small - four of us - and Diane is customizing to our individual goals. I'm not sure what my goal is yet, except that I love to tell stories - mine and others. And I take photographs to help the story along. Ideas are germinating with encouragement from class members and I'll share what's sprouting in my brain at a later date, but one of the nicest gifts of any new learning experience, is the resources brought to our attention. Diane recommends a couple books for would-be writers: The Renegade Writer and Query Letters that Rock. Both are written by Linda Formichelli and Diana Burrell. (I had to order from Amazon because Borders Books didn't have them).

Because of this class, I also bought Eats, Shoots & Leaves: The Zero Tolerance Approach to Punctuation by Lynne Truss. On the back cover is a story that is sure to make all of us much more cautious about our use of punctuation.
     A panda walks into a cafe. He orders a sandwich, eats it, then draws a gun and fires two shots in the air. "Why?" asks the confused waiter, as the panda makes towards the exit. The panda produces a badly punctuated wildlife manual and tosses it over his shoulder. "I'm a panda," he says at the door. "Look it up." The waiter turns to the relevant entry and, sure enough, finds an explanation. "Panda. Large black-and-white bear-like mammal, native to China. Eats, shoots and leaves."
     So, punctuation really does matter, even it if is only occasionally a matter of life and death.

I don't know that this class or another one I'll start next week called, The Art of the Story, will help me join the punctuation stickler's club, but I will forever know what a panda eats! BonnieKingPhotography.com