CRUCIAL question for writers....

Almax

Almax

Really Experienced
Do you put punctuation at the end of chapter titles? Do you SOMETIMES BUT NOT ALWAYS put punctuation at the end of chapter titles? I have spent entire minutes deliberating this!
 
Unless it ends with a question mark or an exclamation mark, no. For some reason that just feels the most natural to me. Now the first word is always capitalised, but I can be a bit wishy-washy about capitalising every word or not.
 
I randomly intersperse punctuation in order to bring fear and uncertainty in my audience! BWHAAHAHAHAHA!

Whoops... whoops... forgot I wasn't still writing evil villain dialogue... ignore that! Ignore that!

Seriously though, I only put punctuation in if it seems appropriate. If the choice would be served better by using punctuation, like say an action sequence, or a decision you felt had high emotion to it, an exclamation point or other punctuation might be appropriate.

My rule of thumb. If a Zoomer would use multiple emojis at that point, probably a good idea to use punctuation.

And random music, because I do that just to be weird.
 
I punctuate titles where it is stylistically appropriate. This has not been the case on any of my published CHYOA stories so far, as they tend to be game-like stories where each chapter title is a description of an action the protagonist takes. It may be in the future. The way I see it, it's just important to be consistent - unless inconsistency is, itself, a theme in your work, especially to evoke a more comic range of emotions.
 
On reviewing my stuff, I find that I'm completely random. Perhaps this is not the ideal approach but on the other hand, I can't see needing to worry about it. Good luck.
 
I tend to use ellipsis too often, but then again in the beginning I went mostly random with puctuation.
Now I consider generally a single period point to be just silly.
Exclamation and question mark are another story, they should be fair game for everyone.
 
I guess I agree with the consensus which is, add what feels appropriate. Sometimes a chapter calls out for an exclamation mark or ellipses or a period. As long as you don't overuse any one piece of punctuation, I think you will be fine. In my mind, it's the window dressing, so if you set the right scene, it accentuates it.
 
Some but not all...Probably less now than before, as I hate to create, write, and have it approved, only to realize later there's a mistake; I can fix it, but I don't know how that will affect feelings of readers or creators-writers of subsequent sections.
 
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