One thing that interests me about comics is the way that cartoonists use punctuation, especially within word balloons. Charles Schulz is particularly interesting in that his habits seem to change throughout the 50-year run of Peanuts. I can't say that I have read all of the strips, but in skimming through over a dozen collections from different decades to prepare this post I have noticed a few recurring practices and shifts relating to the use of the ellipsis. One thing I rarely see is a sentence that ends in a single period. His common practice is to use the edge of the word balloon as a kind of replacement for it:
Here's an exception from the early 70s:
Punctuation that would be normal for so many cartoonists, is strange for Schulz.
In the early years of the strip, he used some very unusual ellipses; sentences can end with as many as seven periods:
Here's one with five:
This practice, which often appears to be a design feature -- to make a balloon more visually balanced in some way (as above) -- doesn't seem to last too long. I could not locate many ellipses that go beyond four once we leave the early to mid-50s. {The seven period one above is also especially appropriate semantically, coming after the word "wait."}
A favorite form for Schulz is the two-period ellipsis. At first I thought this might be used only when space would not allow for a standard one -- but I quickly realized this isn't the case. From 1963:
There are many such occasions when he could have fit in three. I wonder if the two-period ellipsis reads differently to him than one with three . . as a pause with a different meaning . . .
A few late-90s collections show a heavy use of the two period version, much more so than earlier strips do. Somehow this relates to the shaky line and minimalism of the later strips and may add, in a small way, to their strangeness:
It's often a slight mystery to me why he made the choice that he did; and I can't think of another mainstream comic strip artist who takes an approach to the period/ellipsis quite like Schulz's.
His work is only one example of the ways that text in comics -- and especially in word balloons -- is liberated from the kinds of 'rules' that govern prose. It's a way that comics can be aligned with poetry, which shows far more openness and freedom with punctuation. Schulz, for example, almost never ends sentences with a period, a standard stop in essays, short stories, and novels (of course, he makes extensive use of ? and !). I tend to think of balloons as more like a blank page of poetry than a blank page of prose -- a place that's fairly wide open
Thursday, October 30, 2008
Peanuts Punctuation: Prose and Poetry
Wednesday, May 21, 2008
A Glamorous Life
Dave Sim and his fans and critics are going yet another round over the Cerebus creator’s attitudes towards women. I find it hard to get worked up over this issue -- Sim seems to be fairly isolated and so the only person likely harmed by his ideas is himself. Yet what does agitate me about his work is
all of the errors in it. His recent comic glamourpuss is loaded with proofreading problems; there are missing periods and misspelled words, and chronic inconsistency in the use of dashes, capitalization, possessives, and bold text.
These errors might not be important for some readers, yet I think they reveal a major problem with this comic and the production of alternative comics in general -- the lack of editorial oversight. Even more than artists, publishers and editors bear responsibility for this task. Their job is to present the artists in the best possible light: in other words, leave them alone when that benefits the work and make suggestions when it helps. Sim has no editor and proofreader (at least none are listed in the credits) and so does it all himself -- a noble goal, but in this case not the best choice. When I read comics by my favorite creators, I rarely find mistakes like this, and never to this degree -- they are obsessive types who pay attention to every detail. It’s also true that in a book of a certain length, it’s hard to avoid a few problems creeping in, even when you use a team of copy-editors. Yet a comic page typically has far less text than a prose page, so getting it almost free of these problems shouldn't be impossible.
You could argue, and you'd be correct to a large extent, that comics are different than prose, and therefore should not be subject to the same kinds of “rules” and expectations. In prose, for example, a sentence has some form of period-based punctuation at the end: ., !, or ?. But a sentence in a word balloon might not
and it can read just fine. The problem in general is one of communication and consistency. When the lack or (mis)use of punctuation leads to confusion/annoyance for the reader (the kind the artist doesn’t want), chances are something’s gone wrong. And the best reason to find and correct such problems is that a reader will stay focused on the comic and not be distracted.
If I were Sim’s proofreader, a quick count reveals around 90-100 things I would ask him about -- that's a lot for a 25 page comic (there is, granted, a lot more text on these pages than in most comics). Here are just a few of the problems as I see them in glamourpuss:
They begin on the cover: there’s no period in the last balloon.
Is this intentional? It looks OK to me, and had Sim been consistent in the book I would assume that it was intentional -- a strong artist can make any deviation seem right by the context in which it appears. The possessive of glamourpuss appears here as glamourpuss’ -- but on page 22 both glamourpuss’ and glamourpuss’s are used. Both of these forms are accepted (many prefer the latter), but why the inconsistency?
It doesn’t look to me like Sim is paying attention -- he seems to care far more about the art than the writing.
Periods:
I can’t find any consistency with his use of periods. Some sentences in caption boxes or balloons have them, some don’t. Some sentences outside of these have them, some don’t. This problem exists multiple times on nearly every page. The most important reason to use periods consistently is that they guide readers as to how to read the text - when a period was absent, I would assume that the sentence continued into the next part of the balloon. Then, it seemed like he used the frame of the balloon as a period. And when I thought I had this figured out, he would violate it and continue a sentence from a part of the balloon to the next.
Dashes:
Sometime he will use 2 followed by 1: “word -- word – word”
Sometimes 2 by 2: “word -- word -- word”
A character’s name is spelled as Skanko and later as Skank-o.
Bold:
There's no consistency when he bolds an ellipsis.
He will do this: "word word word . . ." and the ellipsis is in bold.
And then "word word word . . ." and the ellipsis is not in bold.
Page 21: he writes “Beyond Noir Style” and then “Beyond Noir Style”:
Quotes and punctuation:
Sometimes: “word.” other times: “word ”.
Production:
Part of a balloon is noticeably chopped off on page 24.
Etc . . .
And if this post seems pedantic to you, fair enough -- but "comics are art too," and why not have high expectations or at least the same expectations as those you have for other art forms? I've never met a poet or fiction writer who didn't care about such details. I wonder if comic readers/publishers have lower standards -- would they accept this level of problems in other kinds of books?
