Punching a Sentence to Death

I have a pet peeve. This is a practice I have been noticing lately among certain writers. I call it punching a sentence to death. It involves writing something that should be a full sentence, but instead the writer has chosen to put a period after each word. You. Know. What. I. Am Talking. About! The intention is to give bold emphasis to each word.

I started noticing this in a novel I read about ten years ago. I thought it was a one off. It was not. I saw it in another novel, and then another. Each time I encounter this, I cringe. It seems overly dramatic and artificial. It is a gimmick. There are other ways to demonstrate emphasis. Without. Resorting. To. This. It is kind of like certain newspapers or tabloids that felt it necessary to put an exclamation point at the end of every sentence. If you need an exclamation mark at the end of each sentence, then the story is not as dramatic as you are trying to make it out.

I feel the same way about punching a sentence to death. If you want a character to say something powerfully, then say it powerfully. If the words are not doing it, then use better words. When I see it, it takes me out of the story, focusing on the form rather than the content. That is generally not something an author wants to happen to his/her readers.

This is just my opinion. Maybe most people are not bothered by a sentence that has been punched to death. Perhaps for the first person who used this, it was avant-garde, but with each use it becomes more normalized, more accepted. Sorry, but for me, I am always going to cringe.

Star Liner

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