Hi Eliezer, one minor issue I have with this (awesome) story is the punctuation. In particular, you often use commas when other punctuation might read better. Here are a few examples from chapter 68:
1.
Hermione wasn’t feeling very nice right now, or Good either, there was a hot ball of anger...
Would read better as:
Hermione wasn’t feeling very nice right now, or Good either. There was a hot ball of anger...
2.
Hermione began speaking, despite her newfound resolution her voice still stumbled a little with nervousness, as...
Would read better as:
Hermione began speaking. Despite her newfound resolution, her voice still stumbled a little with nervousness as...
3.
“That—” Harry’s voice said urgently, she wasn’t looking at him but his voice sounded like he had his head turned toward her. “That was...
Would read better as:
“That—” Harry’s voice said urgently—she wasn’t looking at him but his voice sounded like he had turned toward her—“that was...
I get the impression that you often do this in order to create a sense of rushing/urgency, and it mostly works, but other times it reads awkwardly. It’s particularly noticeable at the beginnings of chapters.
Caveat: I’m not a grammarian so I’m not sure if my edits here are actually more correct, but they read better to me.
I’m no expert, but I’m confident in my own knowledge here; your edits are more correct by the prescriptive standards of English. They also read better to me too, although may I suggest some semicolons sometimes?
Both colons and semi-colons are known to break the flow of writing. Dashes generally flow better than semi-colons. This is something I’ve found after writing many pieces (often with lots of semi-colons, which my natural style has a lot of) on a peer review writing-site and having reviewers tell me - ‘x sentence doesn’t flow well’ for basically every sentence with a semi-colon.
They work better in non-fic writing, where the flow can be more formal.
A substantial disadvantage of semi-colons is simply that they’re rare. If a small but significant portion of your readers don’t read them as you intend you’re better off finding another way.
It’s a pity though, because if I were writing for perfect clones of me, they’d often be the best choice.
Hi Eliezer, one minor issue I have with this (awesome) story is the punctuation. In particular, you often use commas when other punctuation might read better. Here are a few examples from chapter 68:
1.
Would read better as:
2.
Would read better as:
3.
Would read better as:
I get the impression that you often do this in order to create a sense of rushing/urgency, and it mostly works, but other times it reads awkwardly. It’s particularly noticeable at the beginnings of chapters.
Caveat: I’m not a grammarian so I’m not sure if my edits here are actually more correct, but they read better to me.
I’m no expert, but I’m confident in my own knowledge here; your edits are more correct by the prescriptive standards of English. They also read better to me too, although may I suggest some semicolons sometimes?
I agree that semicolons are awesome, and one would probably be the best choice for sentence two.
Both colons and semi-colons are known to break the flow of writing. Dashes generally flow better than semi-colons. This is something I’ve found after writing many pieces (often with lots of semi-colons, which my natural style has a lot of) on a peer review writing-site and having reviewers tell me - ‘x sentence doesn’t flow well’ for basically every sentence with a semi-colon.
They work better in non-fic writing, where the flow can be more formal.
A substantial disadvantage of semi-colons is simply that they’re rare. If a small but significant portion of your readers don’t read them as you intend you’re better off finding another way.
It’s a pity though, because if I were writing for perfect clones of me, they’d often be the best choice.
I use semicolons a lot more when writing on Less Wrong (and other places where intelligence is high) than on many other places.