Reviewed by Sean Dent

The proper method of correcting semicolon misuse used to be a simple smack with the ruler. Noah Lukeman, author of A DASH OF STYLE, eschews the principles of Sister Meredith, taking on the demeanor of a loving uncle, a colleague, and an artist. 

This is not a book for grammarians, but for writers of fiction, non-fiction, memoirs, poetry, and screenplays. His gentle style and guiding hand work beautifully to set the writer at ease at the very start of A DASH OF STYLE. For instance, he shows how throughout history some pretty impressive authors have abused the rules of grammar to wonderful effect, and suggests get it right all the time should not be our primary focus as writers. In this way, he encourages experimentation and makes punctuation fun and interesting.

He calls punctuation our friend and shows how though skilled use, the non-word half of writing makes those very words clearer and adds meaning. He demonstrates through interactive methods (including exercises) how punctuation adds bounce and rhythm to our prose, how it creates sound and motion, how it it clarifies our writing and brings the words to life like tiny whispers in our readers' ears.

Punctuation, he explains, creates its own little world. He puts the elements of that world under a microscope and teaches the writer to become sensitive to this habitat. In this way, the book becomes not about making better grammarians, but about creating better writers.

A DASH OF STYLE focuses on the most important uses of punctuation, those that can impact most creatively on the writers work rather than merely the technical aspects apostrophes and slashes. It concerns itself with such things as how adding or subtracting a punctuation mark will alter the intention of a scene.

As a writer with a firm grasp of the rules of punctuation, I found Lukeman's approach very useful. I don't want to become a grammarian. What I need is to learn from great writers how they used punctuation to create a style and a mood in a scene, and Lukeman delivers. He shows, for example, how periods can be used to create a stream-of-consciousness effect; how commas can indicate a passing of time; how dashes can be used to capture a certain form of dialogue; how a revelation can have dramatic effect through the use of colons. The impact on content, he says quite rightly, is the holy grail of punctuation, and he makes the learning interesting by reference to samples of written language used by such writers as Hemingway, Faulkner, Poe, Melville, Carver, Dickinson. and Stein.

By the end of reading A DASH OF STYLE, the writer will no longer cringe at the thought of punctuation, rather will embrace it as another tool in the writing arsenal.

 About the Author

Noah Lukeman is author of the bestselling The First Five Pages: A Writer’s Guide to Staying Out of the Rejection Pile (Simon & Schuster, 1999), already part of the curriculum in many American universities. He is also author of the bestselling The Plot Thickens: 8 Ways to Bring Fiction to Life (St Martin’s Press, 2002), a BookSense 76 Selection, a Publishers Weekly Daily pick, and a selection of the Writers Digest Book Club. He has also worked as a collaborator, and is co-author, with Lieutenant General Michael “Rifle” DeLong, USMC, Ret., of Inside CentCom (Regnery, 2004), a Main Selection of the Military Book Club. He has contributed to Poets & Writers, Writers Digest, The Writer, and to The Writers Market, and was anthologized in The Practical Writer (Viking, 2004). Some of his previous books have also been published in the UK, and foreign editions have been published in many languages, including Portuguese, Japanese, Korean, Chinese, and Indonesian.

Noah Lukeman is also president of Lukeman Literary Management Ltd, a New York-based literary agency, which he founded in 1996. His clients include winners of the Pulitzer Prize, American Book Award, Pushcart Prize, and O. Henry Award, finalists for the National Book Award, Edgar Award, Pacific Rim Prize, multiple New York Times bestsellers, national journalists, major celebrities, and faculties of American universities ranging from Harvard to Stanford. He has worked as a manager in the New York office of Artists Management Group, Michael Ovitz’s multi-talent management company, and has worked for another New York literary agency. Prior to becoming an agent he worked on the editorial side of several major publishers, including William Morrow and Farrar, Straus, & Giroux, and as editor of a literary magazine.

He has been a guest speaker on the subjects of writing and publishing at numerous forums, including the Wallace Stegner writing programme at Stanford University and the Writers Digest Conference at BookExpo America. He earned his BA with High Honours in English and Creative Writing from Brandeis University, cum laude.

Sean Dent is a freelance writer currently putting the finishing touches to his first novel, entitled Execution Day. Previously he worked as a journalist, a PR specialist, a Senior Editor at NFG Magazine, and has published short fiction in such magazines as Futures Mysterious Anthology, NFG, and Whistling Shade.