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Creative writing

Punctuating a children's book

5 replies

fackinell · 29/07/2013 23:42

I'm an Indie Author and about to self-publish a children's book. It's aimed roughly at 3-6 year olds and from memory, I seem to recall rhyming books tend to use very little or simple punctuation. Can anyone help re. this, please?

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doesmyparentinglookbadinthis · 30/07/2013 06:16

I'm a bit confused by this. Surely you punctuate as necessary for the text to read correctly? I'm not sure you do it any differently just because it's s children's book.
Perhaps you could grab a few similar rhyming books from your library and take a look at those?

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fackinell · 30/07/2013 12:22

Thanks, doesmy. I had a look at some amazon freebies last night and they're using commas and full stops. No complex ones like colons etc. I didn't make myself very clear. Smile Shall have a saunter to the library tomorrow.

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GrendelsMum · 30/07/2013 12:24

My instinct would be to stick to commas and full stops in that context, and I have a passion for the colon and the semi-colon.

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newmumsuchfun · 30/07/2013 12:34

You can either use simple sentences - which would be one clause - no commas. Capital letter at beginning and full stop at the end - no conjunctions. You could substitute full stops for question marks or exclamation marks depending on the sentence.
eg. Where is Spot? He is here! Let's play a game.

Or you could use complex sentences that incorporate two clauses either using a comma or a conjunctive.

My guess would be for 3-6 year olds you should use a mixture of simple and complex - I would use easy conjunctives to link clauses. I certainly wouldnt use any other forms of punctuation or apostrophes which means writing out full words and never using substitutions eg - should not. not shouldn't.

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fackinell · 30/07/2013 16:48

Fantastic, thanks all. It's kind
Of what I thought I should do but people do love to play grammar police, especially with us indies. Grin

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