As alluded to in Issue 3, I have moved on to a new 100 day 'challenge'—reading short stories from The New Yorker for 6 days of the week, and writing on the 7th (god like), for 100 consecutive days.
Reading a story a day has been a pleasure for the most part, but even when I haven't enjoyed a story, it has been instructional on matters of craft. Huge respect for all the writers, even the ones with stories I've rated with atoms rather than stars, because on the 7th day, I eat humble pie and recognise how damn hard it is.
Follow along on Instagram stories and highlights to see what I'm reading and how it rates.
5 star stories from The New Yorker
Of the 54 New Yorker short stories I’ve read, at time of writing, 11 have wowed me sufficiently to receive 5 stars.
Here, they’re listed in alphabetical order (by author’s first name) because it’s too hard to rank them, but there’s no denying I am a huge fan of Lauren Groff:
Clare Sestanovich, You Tell Me
Elif Batuman, The Repugnant Conclusion
Jamil Jan Kochai, The Haunting of Hajji Hotak
J.M Holmes, Children of the Good Book
Lauren Groff, Annunciation
Lauren Groff, To Sunland
Lauren Groff, The Wind
Ling Ma, Peking Duck
Patricia Lockwood, The Winged Thing
Rebecca Curtis, Satellites
Tessa Hadley, After the Funeral
Have you read any of the these? What did you think?
Illuminating your search for punctuation
Do semicolons make you nervous?
Nothing undoes an impeccable selection of words like inappropriate punctuation marks?
What is a semicolon?
A semicolon (;) is a joiner; it connects two *main clauses that are closely related in idea. They:
lend rhythm to a sentence
provide an intentional pause that is a little shorter than a full stop
add meaning through the juxtaposition of ideas
provide clarity—breaking up dense text or removing ambiguity.
Semicolons can also be used to avoid confusion in lists where listed items contain commas. For example: I like eating ice cream, fruit, and salad in summer; soup, bread, and Japanese curry in winter; and cake, porridge, and chocolate year-round.
*a group of words that include a subject and a verb and can stand alone as a grammatical sentence.
Avoid a comma splice, unless it’s a deliberate break from the ‘rules’
You may have heard of a 'comma splice'—where a comma, rather than a semicolon, has been placed between two main clauses. If you really must retain a comma between two main clauses, consider following the comma with an appropriate coordinating conjunction (provided it makes sense): for, and, nor, but, or, yet, so. A useful acronym to remember the coordinating conjunctions is FANBOYS, or you could recite the lyrics of 'Conjunction Junction'.
Of course, rules are made to be broken, and can be done with greater confidence when one is aware of the rules. So now that you know the rules, knock yourself out; I for one am a fan of an economical sprinkling of ‘correctly’ placed semicolons.
Illuminating tips
A little hack to remember when a semicolon applies: think emoticon.
; ) a smile with a wink that says, 'You're my main clause.'When nervously choosing between a semicolon and a comma, an em dash is a safe bet—a forgiving punctuation mark that can take the place of a semicolon and help you avoid a pesky comma splice, and conversely, take the place of a comma and avoid a misplaced semicolon between anything but two main clauses. There are nuanced differences in the resulting meaning, but that's going into the realms of grammar nerd territory—the kind of punctuation decisions I like to ponder and can happily ponder for you.
I hope this has helped; I’d hate to think it has hindered. If you’d like me to do the pondering for you, get in touch.
Spoken word
If you follow me on Instagram, you may know that WordOSaurus, my writing and editing business, is now an exclusive sponsor of Down the Rabbit Hole, a weekly show on MainFM, hosted by Frank Veldze, which features ‘spoken word and music sandwiches for a plague species'.
I discovered Frank's show during lockdown in 2020, in an episode that featured Ali Whitelock reading her stunning poem 'the lactic acid in the calves of your despair'.
It's no surprise that Frank's show has a cult following; you just never know what you'll find when you venture Down the Rabbit Hole.
Tune in on 94.9 MainFM: Wednesday 8 pm–10 pm, Friday (repeat) 12 am–2 am, or listen anytime on Mixcloud.