Punctuation ...

J. C., "Bog standard," The Times Literary Supplement (May 18 2018), p. 36

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Excerpt:

Words being more or less forbidden, you can always fall back on punctuation. But, "be careful with periods!" (Nietzche). Was he being funny? After all, "an exclamation point is like laughing at your own joke" (Scott Fitzgerald). Semi-colons are bad -- "Do not use semicolons" (Kurt Vonnegut) -- but commas  are fine. According to E.H. White, they should fall "with the precision of knives in a circus act, outlining the victim". Gertrude Stein wrote: "I never could bring myself to use a question mark, I always found it positively revolting" (a semicolon would have helped here). "I decided to eliminate the apostrophes", said Richard Wright, though it's not clear why or where.

Some of the above advice comes from Every Day a Word Surprises (Phaidon ...) [see], under section headings such as "words", "Discipline" and "Money". ...

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