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Book club went off the rails over a single comma in chapter 3
I was hosting at my place in Phoenix when Susan insisted the comma after 'he said' in chapter 3 completely changed the character's motivation. We argued for 45 minutes until Mike threw his book at the wall and stormed out. Has anyone else had a debate over punctuation that split your book club in half?
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skyler_mitchell23d ago
Our group had a similar fight over a semicolon in page 142 of "The Night Watchman." I pointed out that the semicolon connected two ideas that made the character seem conflicted, but Linda insisted it was just poor editing. We ended up taking a vote and three people left the club. I still think punctuation can change how you read a whole chapter, but maybe we should all just pick books with simpler sentences next time.
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