The Importance of Line Breaks

Here's a tale about a note that came home from school awhile back. It caused me complete confusion. Why? Because of a bad line break.

It was a slip of paper with all the various possible comments that could be applied to the particular project presented in a series of boxes. In word processing terms, think of a table with text in each box. The circled box, and hence comment on my kid's project, read:

Understandable

rule but needs

more to be

clear

Excuse me? Needs more to be? As in it needs to be clearer? As in: I need more to be speaking English better?

Surely I wasn't seeing things correctly. So I looked again at that little slip of paper. I must have read it 10 times. But then it hit me: the line breaks were making me read each line as a phrase. I was reading those words together, such as in a poem, so that meant I was reading the ungrammatical "more to be" together as some sort of dialect or expression that should have no place in a formal marking scheme.

But if I read it as a whole sentence it's fine, sorta: Undertandable rule but needs more to be clear.

Okay, I got it that way. Needs to add more content to be a clearer rule. Or, broken properly with line breaks:

Understandable rule

but needs more

to be clear.

There. Much clearer. Line breaks do matter. In poems...and apparently in marking schemes.

A Special School Visit

On Friday I visited the school I attended as a kid, Kilbride Public School. What fun to go back to the place that had such a huge influence on me. My talk was in the library and, while it wasn't in the same physical location as it was when I went there to school, it was quite amazing to be there again.

I talked to students from grades K to 4 (at different times) about Let's Go! and The Nature Treasury as well as about the process of writing and editing a book. They tried to convince me that some of them had taken the space shuttle to school, but I wasn't biting. (Although it may be possible that one or all of them could travel in space by the time they're grownups.) What a terrific group of kids. Thanks to everyone for listening. I hope that all of you go for your dreams.

And thanks, too, to Sharon and Ruth for organizing the visit.

Sign of the Times

Here's a stop sign in town. Besides making me stop, it made me ponder.


Profound.

Why Does Everything Cross the Road?

So further to my previous post (click here ) on the deer, deer, coyote encounters on the road, I have had more close crossings. In the last two days I've been out driving, here's what's crossed the road in front of me:

Turtle

Turtle

Rabbit

I kid you not. Another pattern of three. Okay, so the turtles didn't technically cross in front of me. I drove around them because I wasn't about to wait for them. But they were crossing the road. Be careful all you drivers out there!

So why did the frog cross the road? To get to the other flied!

Groan, yes. Well then, tell me a better one.

Three Times is Charmed

Saturday found me driving here and there. I was doing whatever you do when you're driving, concentrating on a tricky hairpin corner, when whoa! I hit the brakes. There was a deer standing right in the middle of the road. It gave me a good look and then sauntered off the road and into the bush. The kids and I thought that was pretty neat.

So then I'm actually driving down my driveway when suddenly a deer springs right in front of my car and bounds into the bush. It all happened so fast I pretty much didn't have time to blink. You can bet that caused a lot of marvelling.

And then that same day I was returning home from yet another trip (kids!) when, just off to the side of the road, I see a streak of brown rushing towards the road. I slam on my brakes. Out in front of my car races a—wait for it—a coyote! (Or some other such canine type creature.) Wow!

So when I got home safely and without further incident I pondered those encounters. Deer, deer, coyote. Hunh. Taken as a whole they seemed sort of completed, and not only because after three close calls I was still un-dinted. I think the feeling came from the element of three. Three feels like a significant number. It feels complete; like closure.

This three thing resonates in stories (in religion too but I'm not going there). Here's how it goes:

The First incident is the setup. What is the situation? It's shown to readers.

The Second incident is a repeat of the first and so it sets the pattern. Readers will now expect that the situation will be repeated, or that it's part of a regular pattern.

The Third incident similar but it's changed somehow. While the reader expects to see what's come before, this time it's different. This is the twist or the unexpected conclusion.

And that's what I experienced with my deer, deer, coyote encounters.

Look for the pattern of three in stories. Would it work for yours? Try it and it might just be the charm you need.