PUNCTUATION

Commas, full stops, colons, semi-colons, hyphens and dashes are like the bones of a skeleton lying beneath the meaning of a sentence.

    As a Royal Literary Fund Fellow, I have to help students at Essex University with their writing. Last week, a very able student from Pakistan brought along a close reading of an excerpt by Dickens from Sketches by Boz. It would have been a first class essay except the student had not looked closely enough at the length of Dickens’s sentences nor thought about the way those sentences were punctuated. 

  On my non RLF days, I’m proof reading Zoë’s Boat before it goes to press. Looking at my own writing is somehow a much harder task than looking at someone else’s - all those punctuation marks and how they affect the rhythm of the page, not to mention the wider punctuation of the page turns in a picture book when you have to imagine the reader, a Mum or Dad, reading aloud to a child and turning those pages; quickly or slowly or deliberately holding back the page turn where there’s a cliff hanger.

WINNIE THE POOH AND THE RLF

Last week I went to Birmingham for a Royal Literary Fund Fellowship meeting for returning fellows. This is the scheme that places writers in universities for two days a week to help students with their essay writing. I did it back in 2005-7 at Kent University and, in September,will do it again at Essex University alongside crime writer, Martyn Waites.
   The day in Birmingham wasn't arduous - there was a short brief from Steve Cook, the Fellowship Officer, a leisurely meal followed by petits fours and coffee, lots of chat with other writers who'd come from all over the country and a goodie bag (above) containing two mugs and a lot of pens to take away.
    A sprinkling of children's writers were present - as there should be - because it's Winnie the Pooh who is funding this scheme: that 'bear of very little brain' but a very big honey pot of riches thanks to Walt Disney .