I
recently read Semicolon: The Past, Present,
and Future of a Misunderstood Mark by Cecelia Watson. For such a hyped book, I wasn’t thrilled. I
should’ve known better – how exciting could such a book really be?
So
why the sudden focus on a punctuation mark that most people don’t use or know
how to apply properly?
The
book’s goals to chart the transformation of a mark designed to create clarity
to a mark destined to create confusion is noble, I guess, but do we really care
enough to read an entire book about ;?
The
lesson learned here? The author believes
grammar rules are needed – so we can violate them. Her book is more about justification for
dismissing language technicalities than it is for praising the semicolon or
identifying its appropriate usage. Here
are select passages that may help you rethink your relationship to grammar, particularly
the semicolon:
“It’s
rough being a stickler for grammar these days,” sighs Lynne Truss in Eats,
Shoots and Leaves, as if before “these days there was a time when
everyone was committed to proper grammar and everyone agreed on what proper
grammar constituted.”
Here
are some interesting excerpts from Watson’s book:
1.
Self-styled
grammar “sticklers,” “snobs,” “nazis,” and “bitches” want so much to get back to
that point in the past where the majority of people respected language and
understood its nuances, and society at large shared a common understanding of
grammar rules. But that place is a mirage. There was no time when everyone spoke
flawless English and people punctuated “properly.” It’s important to come to
grips with this historical fact, because it influences how we act in the
present: after we nail down some basic
punctuation history here through the story of the semicolon, I’ll show that
hanging on to the old story about grammar – the mythical story – limits our
relationship with language. It keeps us
from seeing, describing, and creating beauty in language that rules can’t
comprehend.
2.
For
those of you accustomed to thinking about punctuation as subject to rules, it
probably sounds odd to suggest that punctuation usage could be subject to
shifts in fashion. One of the virtues of
rules would be to insulate us from whims and fancies. But even the originators of rule-based
punctuation’s trendiness. As we saw,
they were conflicted about how best to negotiate the tension between rules and
actual usage. As a result of their
examination of usage, grammarians became keen observers of the punctuation
whims of writers.
3.
The
law is skeletal, a mere naked framework of words, and those words require
interpretation for the law to become animate and to act in the world. Any time interpretation is involved (which
really means: any time a human being
gets involved in anything), there is the opportunity for our best and
most beautiful qualities to inflect the material we are interpreting – but
there is equally the opportunity for our cynicism, our racism, and our little
hatreds and bigotries to be exercised
through the application of laws that are at the end of the day inert tools that
must be wielded by someone to construct a more or less merciful world. Any other vision of our laws – any vision in
which they are perfect and complete and speak for themselves – is fantasy.
4.
So
we need another tactic, whether we think we consider ourselves beginners or
advanced. How do we learn to use English
in a way that sticks better and works better than an abstracted list of
memorized rules? And how do we learn to develop a writing style
that’s recognizable, and at the same time master the ability to be flexible
with that style as the occasion requires?
5. But
that reviewer of James is correct that uncertainty, ambiguity, and vagueness do
put a certain burden on the reader. Or
maybe it’s better to say: they highlight the fact that writing is an exchange
between at least two people: writer and
reader, or sometimes writer and the writer’s own future self. There is nothing wrong with trying to be as
precise as possible in your writing, or with trying to be clear; those goals
are often productive and have their place.
But I don’t think it’s such a bad thing sometimes to be engaged in the
practice of working things out in words, of having a conversation. Ambiguity can be useful and productive, and
it can make some room for new ideas. It
can help the reader create something out of the materials the writer providers.
6. Still,
technology takes even while it gives, and it’s not unreasonable to feel that
one of the things it is taking is our ability to stop occasionally, or at least
to slow down. We bob along feeling
helpless on a frantic current of light and noise, always on the move, our
predicament best depicted in the linear leap forwards of the dash. The semicolon represents a way to slow down,
to stop, and to think; it measures time more meditatively than the catchall
dash, and it can’t be chucked thoughtlessly into just any sentence in place of
just any other mark.
7. If
rules don’t do what they set out to do for us – if rules are just idealizations
of language that don’t manage either to help us learn to write well, or to describe
why a piece of writing is effective or ineffective – does that mean that rules
are totally worthless? Not
necessarily. In fact, 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. That is, we can peel away the
justification that “rules are really in language” and free ourselves to
ask instead, “What good might rules be even if they aren’t strictly necessary
or sufficient?” Rules
considered as frameworks within which to work rather than as boundaries marking
the outer limits of rhetorical possibility, might spur creativity, just as a
poet might find it productive to work within the strictures of the sonnet
form. But we would be making a big
mistake to teach that the only “legal” way to write poetry is to write sonnets. The same goes for punctuation rules.
8. That
love is really for the English language, or for orderliness and organization,
or for tradition. None of these things
is a foolish thing to love. But if we
really love English or if we love the sense of structure that grammar provides,
or if we love traditions and a sense of shared linguistic practices across generations,
we have to look somewhere else to celebrate that devotion; rules will be, just
as they always have been, inadequate to form a protective fence around English.
9. Even
if they aren’t the basis by which we read and write, punctuation rules can’t
just be unthought as though they never existed int eh first place. We could not (and perhaps would not want
to) go back to a time before there were punctuation rules. But maybe we can think beyond them now,
to develop a new, more functional, more ethical philosophy of punctuation; one
that would support a richer way of learning, teaching, using, and loving
language. At the very least, by
reflecting on the history of the commas, colon, question marks, and semicolons
that dot our written language, we can gain some of the perspective necessary to
properly evaluate the virtues and vices of rules. After all, it’s impossible to confront
assumptions that we can’t even see.
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Brian Feinblum’s insightful views, provocative
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much more important when discussed in the third-person. This is copyrighted by
BookMarketingBuzzBlog ©2019. Born and raised in Brooklyn, he now resides in
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IBPA’s Independent. This was named one of the best book
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