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McCarthy's Minimalist Punctuation Rules

Cormac McCarthy had three main punctuation rules: [1] He did not use quotation marks when writing dialogue, requiring careful writing to guide the reader; [2] He rarely used colons and never used semicolons, only using colons to introduce lists; [3] Otherwise, he only believed in using periods, capitalization, and occasional commas to punctuate his writing, aiming to simplify punctuation based on his experience editing 18th century essays. These minimalist punctuation styles were influenced by James Joyce and aimed to make McCarthy's writing as clear as possible.

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366 views2 pages

McCarthy's Minimalist Punctuation Rules

Cormac McCarthy had three main punctuation rules: [1] He did not use quotation marks when writing dialogue, requiring careful writing to guide the reader; [2] He rarely used colons and never used semicolons, only using colons to introduce lists; [3] Otherwise, he only believed in using periods, capitalization, and occasional commas to punctuate his writing, aiming to simplify punctuation based on his experience editing 18th century essays. These minimalist punctuation styles were influenced by James Joyce and aimed to make McCarthy's writing as clear as possible.

Uploaded by

Karen
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
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The Three Punctuation Rules of Cormac

McCarthy (RIP), and How They All Go Back


to James Joyce
in Literature,  Writing | June 13th, 2023 

Note: Today novelist Cormac McCarthy (All the Pretty Horses, The Road and No Country for
Old Men) passed away at the age of 89. Below, we’re revisiting a favorite post from our
archive that focuses on punctuation, a distinctive element of McCarthy’s writing.

Cormac McCarthy has been—as one 1965 reviewer of his first novel, The Orchard Tree,
dubbed him—a “disciple of William Faulkner.” He makes admirable use of Faulknerian traits
in his prose, and I’d always assumed he inherited his punctuation style from Faulkner as
well. But in his very rare 2008 televised interview with Oprah Winfrey, McCarthy cites two
other antecedents: James Joyce and forgotten novelist MacKinlay Kantor,
whose Andersonville won the Pulitzer Prize in 1955. Joyce’s influence dominates, and in
discussion of punctuation, McCarthy stresses that his minimalist approach works in the
interest of maximum clarity. Speaking of Joyce, he says,

James Joyce is a good model for punctuation. He keeps it to an absolute minimum. There’s
no reason to blot the page up with weird little marks. I mean, if you write properly you
shouldn’t have to punctuate.

So what “weird little marks” does McCarthy allow, or not, and why? Below is a brief
summary of his stated rules for punctuation:

1. Quotation Marks:

McCarthy doesn’t use ’em. In his Oprah interview, he says MacKinlay Kantor was the first
writer he read who left them out. McCarthy stresses that this way of writing dialogue
requires particular deliberation. Speaking of writers who have imitated him, he says, “You
really have to be aware that there are no quotation marks, and write in such a way as to
guide people as to who’s speaking.” Otherwise, confusion reigns.

2. Colons and semicolons:

Careful McCarthy reader Oprah says she “saw a colon once” in McCarthy’s prose, but she
never encountered a semicolon. McCarthy confirms: “No semicolons.”
Of the colon, he says: “You can use a colon, if you’re getting ready to give a list of something
that follows from what you just said. Like, these are the reasons.” This is a specific occasion
that does not present itself often. The colon, one might say, genuflects to a very specific
logical development, enumeration. McCarthy deems most other punctuation uses needless.

3. All other punctuation:

Aside from his restrictive rationing of the colon, McCarthy declares his stylistic convictions
with simplicity: “I believe in periods, in capitals, in the occasional comma, and that’s it.” It’s
a discipline he learned first in a college English class, where he worked to simplify
18th century essays for a textbook the professor was editing. Early modern English is
notoriously cluttered with confounding punctuation, which did not become standardized
until comparatively recently.

McCarthy, enamored of the prose style of the Neoclassical English writers but annoyed by
their over-reliance on semicolons, remembers paring down an essay “by Swift or
something” and hearing his professor say, “this is very good, this is exactly what’s needed.”
Encouraged, he continued to simplify, working, he says to Oprah, “to make it easier, not to
make it harder” to decipher his prose. For those who find McCarthy sometimes
maddeningly opaque, this statement of intent may not help clarify things much. But lovers
of his work may find renewed appreciation for his streamlined syntax.

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