Punctuate by ear, not by rule
For a first draft, your ear beats the rule book — a comma is a pause you can hear, so read the sentence aloud and punctuate where you breathe.
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When Cormac McCarthy rebuilt W. Brian Arthur's economics article, he didn't reach for a grammar handbook. His guidance was closer to this: for a first draft, spoken language and common sense are better guides than rule books, because it's more important to be understood than to be grammatically perfect. Punctuation, in this view, is a transcription of speech — so you punctuate by ear.
How it works
Read the sentence aloud and mark where you actually pause. A comma denotes a pause in speaking, which is why "In contrast, …" takes a comma — to set the whole sentence off from the last one, the way your voice would. Reserve the em dash for the clause you most want to stress, without reaching for bold or italics; let parentheses carry the quieter aside, gentler than a comma; and don't lean on the semicolon as a crutch to weld two loosely linked ideas together, which only props up a sentence that should be two. Contractions are fine — isn't, don't, it's — and exclamation marks almost never are; if something is surprising, a word like "surprisingly" does the job once or twice a piece. In every case the test is your ear, not the rule.
Why it matters
Rule-driven punctuation produces sentences that are technically correct and rhythmically dead — the reader's inner voice stumbles where the marks don't match how the line would be spoken. Punctuating by ear keeps the prose in sync with the reader's own reading voice, so the sentence lands the way you'd say it. And it frees you from the folk-rules that make writers anxious: the point isn't a perfect diagram, it's a line a reader can hear.
Try it
- Read each sentence aloud and put a comma where you genuinely pause — no more, no fewer.
- Save the em dash for real emphasis, parentheses for the quiet aside, and don't let a semicolon rescue a sentence that wants to be two.
- Cut exclamation marks; if the point is striking, say so in a word, sparingly.
Common pitfalls
Treating "by ear" as licence for chaos — the ear is a reliable guide precisely because you read aloud and honestly; mumbling past the line doesn't count. And keeping the ear only for the first draft, then re-imposing folk-rules in revision that undo the rhythm you found.
Commas denote a pause in speaking. Speak the sentence aloud to find pauses.
CORMAC McCARTHY · WRITING ADVICE · 1996
Punctuation transcribes speech. If you can't hear the pause, don't write the comma.
Drawn from
- William, The Writing Secret That Turned an Unknown Academic Into a Thought Leader (Writer Science, 2025).
- Cormac McCarthy's writing advice to W. Brian Arthur (1996).
- Related: Use the em dash for emphasis, A sentence is relationships, not words, Cut what the reader can infer.
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