Cormac McCarthy Punctuation Rules

In the article "Cormac McCarthy's Three Punctuation Rules," there is a discussion about how the use of punctuation can overcomplicate writing. Cormac McCarthy, author of The Orchard Tree, is said to be highly influenced Neoclassicism English writers. However, unlike the style of many authors of this period, he believes that punctuation is often unnecessary. While punctuation is often used to provide clarity of who is speaking and to separate items or thoughts, McCarthy keeps punctuation to a minimum to provide clarity. In his writing, he never uses semicolons and has only used a colon once in all of his published works; McCarthy even omits the use of quotation marks entirely, forcing him to reimagine the way dialogue should be presented. Although his minimal use of punctuation is "to make it easier, not to make it harder," some of his works have been met by frustration by his audience and literary critics. Nonetheless, McCarthy's unconventional simplified syntax has surely challenged readers to rethink the way that punctuation is used in modern literature.