Welcome to Litsy!

A highly entertaining history & current use commentary on a punctuation mark that isn‘t for “highfalutin snobs,” but for anyone who loves language. “If we can learn to see past rules as the *only* framework with which we can understand and learn to use language, we might be able to see what purposes rules could *really* serve.” From the badassery of Elizabeth Anscombe, to liquor laws & the death penalty, the semicolon has great stories!

The US Supreme Court has ruled that “punctuation is a most fallible standard by which to interpret a writing.” Taking it even further, courts have opined that “punctuation is no part of the English language.”

It got worse: 3 years later, the parenthesis had gone from Quasimodo to quasi ghost, [being deemed] “nearly obsolete.” The curved marks that humanist thinker Desiderius Erasmus had romantically called “little moons” (lunulae) had crashed down to earth.

Uncertainty, after all, is very human, and can call forth our best human virtues.

A review of his 1904 book, The Golden Bowl, appeared under the heading “A Novel for the Select Few.”

Punctuation has to be judged by how it shapes the text in which it‘s situated. The problem, for writers and readers, is how to go about figuring out whether punctuation is any good or not without the security of a book of rules. It‘s a tough thing to do, to learn to let go of getting answers from stylebooks and to replace that practice with asking exploratory questions about our texts.

Kurt Vonnegut was unequivocal in his last book, advising writers, “Do not use semicolons. They are transvestite hermaphrodites representing absolutely nothing. All they do is show you‘ve been to college.”

If you had asked me if I would ever read an entire book about a punctuation mark, I‘m quite sure I would have said, “no.” Much to my surprise, however, I have read an entire book about a punctuation mark AND I enjoyed it. The author clearly enjoys language and manipulation of words through clever uses of punctuation. She has done thorough research. The book had me laughing aloud at times. Toward the end, I was a bit less interested.

#Scarathon @Clwojick #TeamSlaughter What a scary book!🤣 For those of you who are language and punctuation wonks- and you know who you are- who read Drexler‘s English as a bit of a palate cleanser between volumes of Proust, this is the book for you. I was fascinated by the stories of the legal battles that turned on a semi-colon; the literary kerfuffles over the punctuation mark that is described as common and posh. Fun read- good as audio!4⭐️

It‘s my Birthday Week! (52 on Friday 🎂) Totally required to pop into one of my favorite indie bookstores.

Those damned Renaissance grammar Nazis!

I like the sound of this book, though; a whole tome on the history of a punctuation mark! ❤;❤

https://www.theparisreview.org/blog/2019/08/01/the-birth-of-the-semicolon/

Hahah! It‘s the attention to detail that counts in life! 🤣

Shout out to all you lovely Virgos!

What should you be reading this month?
https://lithub.com/the-astrology-book-club-what-to-read-this-month-based-on-your...