For most of the time, following proper grammatical conventions when writing is very crucial in creating rhetorical pieces of high quality. The reason why these grammar conventions exist is to make it easier for the audience to clearly grasp what the author is trying to portray. Having a set of rules that have been universally agreed upon makes distinguishing sound writing from those that aren’t very easy. These rules can, however, be ignored to a certain extent to further advance one’s writing; especially regarding creative works. Authors of creative stories have full control to map the story in any way they want. Eloquent passages may contain comma splices, punctuation errors, and etc., but still have better explanations and detail than one that has no errors. This can be seen in scene 1 of “The Tape” in which the colon is used in the wrong way.
A colon is a punctuation mark used to precede a list of items, a quotation or an expansion or explanation. It is also added between independent clauses when the second explains or illustrates the first. Colons are frequently used improperly: users forget to add independent clauses after the colon when adding extra explanation. There are 2 ways in which colons can be properly used. This can be done by thinking of colons as periods or when you can lead in the second sentence with “for example” or “that is”. Many have the misconception that a colon is like a comma. This thought process makes sense because colons are used to further emphasize/explain in detail about a previous statement. But as a grammatical convention, colons serve as periods while semi colons act as commas. Even though, the wrong use of colons is a grammatical error, it doesn’t really muddle the meaning of a sentence or passage.
In scene 1 of, “The Tape”, There are a few instances in which the colon is used in the wrong way. “Dinner was per usual this particular night: dead silence filling the lifeless chambers of their home.” (Ahn et al, The Tape) A better version of this sentence would be, “Dinner was per usual this particular night: the dead silence filled the lifeless chambers of their home.” This would be better because an independent clause comes right after the colon, making a sentence that is grammatically correct. This correction is quite minor and not changing it wouldn’t affect the readers from understanding, in this case, that the family in “The Tape” did not talk much during dinnertime. There is another colon error in later parts of “The Tape”. “The past year of this family’s lives felt as if it had always been this way: silence, still, and stagnant.” Again, a dependent clause comes after a colon. The use of colons really helps the readers to fully understand what the author is trying to express to them and even when used in a wrong matter the audience can still comprehend the meaning.
It is interesting to see that though scene 1 of “The Tape” had some colon errors, there were parts in scene 2 where the colon was used correctly. “There I was surrounded by a growing puddle of water with my hair entangling my face, but I could not dwell any longer: I had a duty to fix the window.” Now in another Storium story called, “Unexpected Love”, the colon is actually used in the proper way. “At this point, Dexter’s hands and his feet are cold, shriveled in perspiration form the dread of this very moment: he finally has the opportunity to talk to his biggest crush since middle school.” (TheArtist14 et al, Unexpected Love) Both sentences from “The Tape” and “Unexpected Love” are very well-crafted sentences in that there are virtually no grammar errors and after the colon an independent clause, that is an expansion of the previous sentence, is inserted.
Some readers take grammatical errors very seriously and believe that slight errors decrease the quality of the writing a lot. I, however, believe that a little mistake here and there won’t affect the writing as much: this is true especially with the colon. Whether grammatically wrong or not, as long as the reader understands clearly without hesitation, the writing isn’t necessarily bad. Colons are hard to use because there are underlying thoughts that writers carry about the colon. This is the reason for their frequent misuse. The wrongful use of colons can mess up the meaning of a passage but also can possibly not affect it at all. This phenomenon shows that grammatical conventions are malleable to a certain degree and can be broken to make one’s writing better.