buried things

okay I'm going to go with WIP, current word count (so you get an idea of how prevalent punctuation marks are for the length of the story so far), and punctuation of choice (semicolons, interrobangs, and I'm also going to go with colons [because somewhat unusual] and em dashes [because my beloved])

I'm also only going to look at novels, although I do have several short stories in the works right now

FrankWIP

~47,000 words, which is the longest of any current WIP despite this one having been impulse-started in November (i.e., more recently than any almost any other WIP)

punctuation use

; 71

!? 2 (this was 100% the WIP I was working on while lamenting The Lord of the Wood had zero interrobangs, so obviously I added some)

: 50 (lmao good for her)

— 270 (when I tell you I immediately started giggling when the search results came up lmaooooooooooooo)

MarthaWIP

~10,700 words, which is more than I thought, and honestly good for me. I started this WIP a little over a year ago, decided to write a synopsis before drafting because publishing, did so, and utterly killed my motivation. oops. lesson learned: I am a plantser and I should stay there instead of trying to become a plotter

punctuation use

; 13

!? nil, BUT I do have this line which I think should count as an honorary interrobang

"Mother," Martha said emphatically, "fucker."

: 20 (although some of them, unusually for me, are used in time denotations rather than sentences)

— 52

GothicWIP

~14,200 words. which would be more impressive if I hadn't originally started this in like December 2024, abandoned it for a year, come back to it in December 2025, abandoned it until I could go on a research trip for it in April 2026, went on said trip, abandoned it until The Lord of the Wood released...

punctuation use

; 28 (it's historical which always drives my semicolon use up lmao)

!? nil (ngl that'll probably be my answer for the interrobang for every WIP except FrankWIP since FrankWIP was the one I was actively working on last time interrobangs came up, and it's also the WIP to which the interrobang is most appropriate)

: 30 (this is probably also due to the story being historical)

— 70

BureaucracyWIP

punctuation use

~7,000 words drafted very slowly over like two years in between other things. recently it's really gripped me again, but I have yet to really commit to a project now that I'm off contract... so probably not... unless...?

; 24

!? nil (it's actually unthinkable that there'd be an interrobang in this WIP about a post-death bureaucracy and a quiet, staid old aroace lesbian)(although now that I've said that I'm like CHALLENGE ACCEPTED @ myself, so)(we'll see)

: 12, but it's probably gonna go up since we have employee handbook excerpts and stuff

— 40

NettieWIP

punctuation use

~24,200 words, with the distinction that, unlike my other WIPs, this one is in a second draft. which might've been finished had I not veered so far from my own chapter outline by like Chapter Nine that I had to stop revising. because. I need to redo my chapter outline. but :,)

; 20

!? nil (also unlikely for this WIP to have any interrobangs on account of Nettie as a person)

: 19

— 85 (do you like how the other results were so restrained compared to the other WIPs and given the word count of this book, and then the em dashes came out like >:} not as many per capita as FrankWIP, but that's mostly because Nettie is blunt and curt and less given to stammering or letting herself be cut off than Frank is)