Punctuation Poser

Teachers always come up with the most mind boggling questions about punctuation. I must admit to being stumped a few times, but hey, I also learn a lot from their questions. Recently, I was asked, by different groups of teachers, about the punctuation of sound words in essays. Do these words have to be within quotation marks? For example, Ring! My alarm clock went off at six.

This is a new one for me in all my years of teaching, but common sense tells me that there will be different styles for punctuating this. Isn’t punctuation often governed by style rather than rules? I favour no quotation marks but I decided to comb through several books to see what the convention is.

Here are some examples from two different books to illustrate my point. I must confess that I went through many books to find these examples!

From Ted Hughes, The Iron Man

And his right foot, his enormous iron right foot, lifted- up, out, into space, and the Iron man stepped forward, off the cliff, into nothingness.
CRRRAAAASSSSSH!
Down the cliff the Iron Man came toppling, head over heels.
CRASH! CRASH! CRASH!

… One of the seagulls flew up-Aaaaaark! He had seen something.

In the above examples, you can see that capital letters are used to emphasise a loud sound and there are no quotation marks. Even the seagull’s scream is written without quotation marks and it is clear that the sound was made by the seagull. And yes, please do note that it’s quite acceptable to stretch out a word to suggest a long drop or a prolonged sound as in CRRRAAAASSSSH!

From J.K. Rowling’s Harry Potter and Order of the Phoenix.

WHOOSH. With a clattering, a whirring of wings, and a soft fall of dust, a fourth owl came shooting out of the kitchen fireplace.

“… We already knew nearly everything they told us, from using the Extendable Ears. The only bit was__”
Crack.
“OUCH!”
“Keep your voice down, Ron or Mum’ll be back up here.”

.. it froze in midair and fell, with a surprisingly loud thunk, onto the worn carpet below.

“R-r-riddikulus!” Mrs Weasley sobbed, pointing her shaking wand at Ron’s body.
Crack.
Ron’s body turned into Bill’s…

“OUCH!”
Harry had gripped the bowtrukle so hard that it had almost snapped; it had just taken a great retaliatory swipe at his hand with its sharp fingers…

They were saved, it did not matter that Ron had let in those two goals, nobody would remember it as long as Gryffindor had won -
WHAM!
A Bludger hit Harry squarely in the small of the back…

BOOM!
The very floor of the office shook; Umbridge slipped sideways, clutching her desk for support, looking shocked.

Rowling uses quotation marks when the sound is made by a person like the “ouch”. But sounds made by objects like the wings of the owl (Whoosh), the wand ( crack) and the Bludger (wham!) and even BOOM! are not in quotation marks and are capitalised only to suggest a loud sound. Sometimes they are in italics to distinguish them from the main narrative. When writing by hand, it’s not possible to italicise, so this is where quotation marks may come in handy to indicate the difference, for example, “ with a surprisingly loud “thunk”, onto the worn carpet below.”

So, what are we to conclude? If the child writes,
RING! Or RRRINGGGG! There is no need to use quotation marks. Capital letters are optional too. But if there is a danger that the sound is going to be confused with the main narrative, using quotation marks can help.

If the sound is made by an object like in this example from Spider Boys,

The clock tower not far away strikes, “Tong…! Tong…! Tong…!” clearly nine times…

quotation marks are clearly needed.

Not satisfied with this, I even wrote to two of my editors from Marshall Cavendish to ask what their house rules are for punctuating such words. They didn’t have one, but both suggested no quotation marks.

Ultimately, I don’t think it makes any difference whether one uses the quotation marks or not. Readers can infer that the sound is made by an alarm clock or a buzzer. However, it’s good to be consistent in writing and stay with one style, whatever it is. Teachers are often concerned that PSLE markers will deduct marks for what they perceive to be the wrong punctuation. But if so many teachers are confused by this, don’t you think it’s unfair to penalise twelve-year olds on such a small technicality?