Pointing out the obvious is oftentimes an encyclopedia’s job. Doing so poorly or haphazardly is not, but that’s how it goes down on Wikipedia at times, leading to the following quote, from the article on The Adventures of Pinocchio:
Once he arrives at home, a talking cricket (called the Talking Cricket) tells him that boys who do not obey their parents grow up to be donkeys.
Parenthetical statements can enliven a sentence, inserting an under-the-breath bit of information that makes the sentence come alive beyond the original statement. Like most exciting punctuation, however, they should be used sparingly, as one would add spices to an entree. A little too much, and the meal is ruined, tasting entirely like the spice you added. What were you thinking?
I’m a fan of the dash and the semicolon–both of which are dangerous territory for an inexperienced writer. I probably use both more often than I should, and probably incorrectly at times. I steer clear of parenthetical statements most of the time because they can slow down an idea and undercut the original content of the sentence. It should be said in the above quote’s defense that there’s a hyperlink to the “Talking Cricket” article on Wikipedia in the parenthetical. That doesn’t justify the distracting flow of the first half of the sentence. Surely there’s a better way to communicate that in the original story, the talking cricket was left unnamed, only referred to as “the Talking Cricket,” not Jiminy as in the Disney adaptation. I mean, I just managed it, right?
The next installment of this feature will focus on something else besides writing style minutiae. Wikipedia (called Wikipedia) is a goldmine for looking at human knowledge and what the average person (called the average person) considers useful or noteworthy information. There’s just the matter of determining what’s noteworthy about that. «»
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