The other day I sent my students an email with a link to this. I wish there were one for the dash. Last week they had to write 100+ word sentences, which meant we were talking about punctuation.
I really do like punctuation and how it makes sentences fit together; over the summer I’d like to put more thought into teaching it and spend more time on it in the fall. But for last week, I let myself get excited about dashes. “They are the drama queens!” I told them, and related my stories about dashes.
Some of them were amused. Some of them looked at me with expressions wondering how such a dork was allowed to stand in front of a classroom full of college freshmen. It was great.
Today we talked about fragments. Not how they’re bad, but how they can be wonderful when you use them on purpose.
Yes. I was excited about this too. I even contemplated throwing the book over my shoulder; but I didn’t. Maybe next semester.
Sometimes fragments are distracting. Let me see. Oh that’s right. I was reading Wicked by Gregory Macguire and found his fragments distracting. That said, I bothered my composition teacher in high school with my use of fragments. 🙂