“the subjective element”: Ibid., p. 132.
“recommend a single rule”: Russell David Harper, preface to The Chicago Manual of Style, 16th ed. (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2010).
“extrapolate”: “Numbers,” The Chicago Manual of Style Online, accessed September 4, 2018, https://www.chicagomanualofstyle.org/qanda/data/faq/topics/Numbers/faq0008.html. See also “Citation, Documentation of Sources,” The Chicago Manual of Style Online, accessed September 4, 2018, https://www.chicagomanualofstyle.org/qanda/data/faq/topics/Documentation/faq0028.html.
“logical application”: The Chicago Manual of Style, 17th ed. (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2017), p. 364.
Turkish and Arabic: Harun Küçük, reply to the author’s Facebook post, September 16, 2017.
“the California stop”: Paul Festa, Skype call with the author, February 18, 2018.
“in Texas”: Tim Casey, reply to the author’s Facebook post, September 16, 2017.
VII. SEMICOLON SAVANTS
a “golly” or two: Mark Twain, Mark Twain’s Library of Humor, ed. Washington Irving (New York: Random House, 2010), p. 175.
“The damned half-developed foetus”: Shaun Usher, Letters of Note (Edinburgh: Canongate Unbound, 2013), p. 206.
“printer’s proof-reader was improving”: Mark Twain, Autobiography of Mark Twain, Volume 1: The Complete and Authoritative Edition, ed. Harriet E. Smith, Benjamin Griffin, Victor Fischer, and Michael Barry Frank (Oakland: University of California Press, 2010), p. 677.
“I use [the semicolon]”: John Henley, “The End of the Line?” The Guardian, April 3, 2008, accessed September 4, 2018, https://www.theguardian.com/world/2008/apr/04/france.britishidentity.
“Coleridge has chosen”: Irving N. Rothman, “Coleridge on the Semi-colon in Robinson Crusoe: Problems in Editing Defoe,” Studies in the Novel 27, no. 3 (1995): 320–340, http://www.jstor.org/stable/29533073.
“I shaved and showered”: Raymond Chandler, The Big Sleep, Farewell, My Lovely, The High Window (New York: A. A. Knopf, 2002), p. 137.
“would you convey my compliments”: Usher, Letters of Note, p. 78.
Chandler responded with a poem: Shaun Usher, “God damn it, I split it so it will stay split,” Letters of Note (blog), April 20, 2012, http://www.lettersofnote.com/2012/04/god-damn-it-i-split-it-so-it-will-stay.html.
“If you can go past”: Raymond Chandler, “Oscar Night in Hollywood,” The Atlantic (March 1948), https://www.the atlantic.com/magazine/archive/1948/03/oscar-night-in-hollywood/305705/.
“I didn’t mind what she called me”: Raymond Chandler, The Big Sleep (1939; New York: Vintage Books, 1992), p. 158.
“weak-charactered writers”: Truss, Eats, Shoots and Leaves, p. 126.
“The sweat wis lashing”: Irvine Welsh, Trainspotting (New York: W. W. Norton, 1996), p. 3.
“It wis good fir a while”: Irvine Welsh, “A Soft Touch,” The Acid House (New York: W. W. Norton, 1995); reprinted in Dohra Ahmad, Rotten English: A Literary Anthology (New York: W. W. Norton, 2007), p. 267.
“That bygone time”: Rebecca Solnit, “Diary,” London Review of Books 35, no. 16 (2013): 32–33, https://www.lrb.co.uk/v35/n16/rebecca-solnit/diary.
“American Men commit murder-suicides”: Rebecca Solnit, Men Explain Things to Me (New York: Haymarket Books, 2014), p. 24.
“women are capable”: Ibid, p. 35.
“Good things came about”: Solnit, “Diary.”
a dramatic chase scene: “Islands,” Planet Earth II, BBC Natural History Unit, BBC America, and Zweites Deutsches Fernsehen, February 18, 2017.
three and a half years: Emily Badiozzaman, “27 Mind-Blowing Facts About the Making of Planet Earth II,” ShortList (blog), December 12, 2016, https://www.shortlist.com/entertainment/tv/making-of-planet-earth-ii-david-atten borough-how-they-made/71586.
“Remember that writing is not typing”: Rebecca Solnit, “How to Be a Writer,” Literary Hub (blog), September 13, 2016, https://lithub.com/how-to-be-a-writer-10-tips-from-rebecca-solnit/.
there were still first-run copies: Philip Hoare, “What Moby-Dick Means to Me,” New Yorker (November 3, 2011), https://www.newyorker.com/books/page-turner/what-moby-dick-means-to-me.
“But if there are any of our readers”: “Book Notices,” United States Democratic Review (Langtree and O’Sullivan, 1852), vol. 30, p. 93.
“The style of his tale”: Quoted in Hershel Parker, Herman Melville: A Biography (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1996), p. 18.
“And, as for me”: Herman Melville, Moby-Dick: or, The Whale (1851; New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1902), p. 96.
“Finally: It was stated”: Ibid., p. 123.
“‘Moby-Dick’ is not a novel”: Hoare, “What Moby-Dick Means to Me.”
“The plot is meagre”: London Britannia, November 8, 1851.
“When instantly, the entire ship careens”: Melville, Moby-Dick, p. 264.
“In the case of a small Sperm Whale”: Ibid., p. 261.
“Its oceanic reach”: Hoare, “What Moby-Dick Means to Me.”
“Is it that by its indefiniteness”: Melville, Moby-Dick, p. 169.
“mystical and well nigh ineffable”: Ibid., p. 162.
“horror”: Ibid.
“almost despair[ed]”: Ibid.
“Mr. Melville grows wilder”: Review in New York Evangelist, November 20, 1851. Quoted in Herman Melville: The Contemporary Reviews, ed. Hershel Parker and Brian Higgins (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009), p. 379.
“there is something really overwhelming”: D. H. Lawrence, Studies in Classic American Literature (1923; New York: Cambridge University Press, 2003), vol. 2, p. 142.
“acute periodic exasperation”: Edward Jenks, The Independent Review (T. F. Unwin, 1905), vol. 6, p. 105.
“cumbrous and difficult”: Ibid., p. 109.
“a more difficult book”: William Thomas Stead, The Review of Reviews (Office of the Review of Reviews, 1905), p. 314.
“unreadable”: Ibid., p. 315.
“Life is too short”: Ibid.
“the seasoned reader”: The Reader Magazine (Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill, 1905), vol. 5, p. 381.
“Someone has said”: “William James,” The Chautauquan: A Weekly Newsmagazine (May 1908).
becomes tortured and effortful: For the comparison of these two passages, see Royal A. Gettmann, “Henry James’s Revision of The American,” American Literature 16, no. 4 (1945): 289, doi:10.2307/2920715.
“He glared at her a moment”: Henry James, The Portrait of a Lady (London: Macmillan & Co., 1881), p. 247.
“His kiss was like white lightning”: Henry James, The Portrait of a Lady (1908; Hertfordshire: Wordsworth Editions, 1999), p. 499.
In the revised version: Dominic J. Bazzanella, “The Conclusion to The Portrait of a Lady Re-examined,” American Literature 41, no. 1 (1969): 55–63, doi:10.2307/2924346. As Bazzanella and others point out, partly this was the fault of reviewers of the 1881 edition, who couldn’t accept the ambiguity of James’s original ending. Still, James chose to bend to those criticisms.
“the reinstatement of the vague”: William James, The Principles of Psychology (1890; New York: Dover, 1950), p. 254.
“The boundary line of the mental”: Ibid., p. 6.
“Use the word ‘field’”: William James, Manuscript Lectures, ed. Frederick Burkhardt and Fredson Bowers (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1988), p. 220.
He used “vague” as a compliment: James, Principles, p. 186.
“used to gloss over”: Robinson, “Philosophy of Punctuation.”
“exotic” and “transcends the limits”: Hans-Johann Glock, “Was Wittgenstein an Analytic Philosopher?” Metaphilosophy 35 (July 2004): 419.
“Der Philosoph behandelt”: Ludwig Wittgenstein, Philosophische Untersuchungen (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1958), p. 91.
“The philosopher’s treatment”: Ludwig Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investigations, 2nd ed., trans. G. E. M. Anscombe (Oxf
ord: Basil Blackwell, 1968), p. 255.
“profound” semicolon: Erich Heller, The Importance of Nietzsche (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1988), p. 142.
“As a rule”: [Unsigned review], Blackwood’s Magazine 131 (March 1882): 374–382; reprinted in Roger Gard, Henry James (New York: Routledge, 2013), p. 103.
James’s very first interview: Preston Lockwood, “Henry James’s First Interview,” New York Times, March 21, 1915.
Heinrich von Kleist used the dash: “Er stieß noch dem letzten viehischen Mordknecht, der ihren schlanken Leib umfaßt hielt, mit dem Griff des Degens ins Gesicht, daß er, mit aus dem Mund vorquellendem Blut, zurücktaumelte; bot dann der Dame, unter einer verbindlichen, französischen Anrede den Arm, und führte sie, die von allen solchen Auftritten sprachlos war, in den anderen, von der Flamme noch nicht ergriffenen, Flügel des Palastes, wo sie auch völlig bewußtlos niedersank. Hier—traf er, da bald darauf ihre erschrockenen Frauen erschienen, Anstalten, einen Arzt zu rufen; versicherte, indem er sich den Hut aufsetzte, daß sie sich bald erholen würde; und kehrte in den Kampf zurück.” See Heinrich von Kleist, “Die Marquise von O . . . ,” http://gutenberg.spiegel.de/buch/die-marquise-von-o-1–580/1.
“the dashtard”: James Marcus, reply to the author’s Facebook post, September 16, 2017.
“live deep”: Henry David Thoreau, Walden (1854; New York: Thomas Y. Crowell, 1910), p. 118.
“In any weather”: Ibid., pp. 19–20.
VIII. PERSUASION AND PRETENSION: ARE SEMICOLONS FOR SNOBS?
“pretentious”: Robinson, “Philosophy of Punctuation.”
“favored by writers”: June Casagrande, “A Word, Please: Writers Who Use Semicolons Aren’t Thinking About the Reader,” Los Angeles Times, July 23, 2015, http://www.latimes.com/tn-hbi-et-0723-casagrande-20150723-story.html.
“It seems paradoxical”: E. H. Mullin, “A Plea for the Semicolon,” The Chap-Book (February 1, 1898), p. 247.
“Perhaps it is easy”: Martin Luther King, “Letter from Birmingham Jail,” www.stanford.edu/group/King/frequent docs/birmingham.pdf.
“I don’t know”: David Foster Wallace, Consider the Lobster (New York: Little, Brown, 2006), Kindle location 1410.
what must have been offensive: Ibid., Kindle location 1542.
a SNOOT: Ibid., Kindle location 922.
he read his punctuation aloud: Andrew Adam Newman, “How Should a Book Sound? And What About Footnotes?” New York Times, January 20, 2006, p. E33.
CONCLUSION: AGAINST THE RULES?
“echo in the background”: Theodor W. Adorno, “Punctuation Marks,” trans. Shierry Weber Nicholsen, Antioch Review 48 (Summer 1990): 305.
“Mr. Romney”: Carol Hartsell, “Jon Stewart Slams You-Didn’t-Build-That-Gate in Romney, Fox News’ Face,” HuffPost, July 26, 2012, https://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/07/26/jon-stewart-you-didnt-build-that_n_1705264.html. Italics mine.
Index
The pagination of this digital edition does not match the print edition from which the index was created. To locate a specific entry, please use your ebook reader’s search tools.
Adorno, Theodor, 176
Against the rules, 173–83
Allen, Charles H., 60–61
Ambiguity, 144–50
American grammar wars, 23–43
Brown’s The Grammar of English Grammars, 23–24, 29–32, 42–43
Bullions and, 39–41
Clark’s sentence-diagramming technique, 36–39
Kirkham’s English Grammar, 28–32, 34
Lowth’s A Short Introduction to English Grammar, 25–27
Morris’s grammar, 33–36
Murray’s An English Grammar, 27–28, 30
science-based grammar rules, 32–39
American Volunteer Motor Ambulance Corps, 151
Analytic philosophy, 146–48
Anscombe, G. E. M., 147–48, 148n
Anti-immigrant sentiments, 82–84
Anti-Irish sentiments, 84
Aphorisms, 147–48
Aquinas, Thomas, 164
Arabic, semicolon in, 94
Atlantic, The, 108–9
Attenborough, David, 123–24
“Authority and American Usage” (Wallace), 166–71
Ayres, Alfred, 35–36n
Baker, Nicholson, 153
Bard College, 9
Barthelme, Donald, 1, 17
Belmont Stakes, 112, 116
Bembo, Pietro, 14–16
Berlin Hauptbahnhof Apotheke, 181
Big Sleep, The (Chandler), 106–7, 113–15, 113n
Birth of the semicolon, 13–20
humanists on the art of expression, 18–19
Manutius and Bembo typeface, 14–16
punctus percontativus, 17–18
Boston Globe, 52, 60–61, 62
Brandeis, Louis, 79–80
Brief Wonderous Life of Oscar Wao, The (Díaz), 161
Broun, Heywood, 83–84
Brown, Goold, 23–24, 23–24n, 29–32, 31–32n, 42–43, 47–48
Buber, Martin, 165
Bullions, Peter, 39–41
Byron, George Gordon, Lord, 31
California State Board of Education, 52
Campbell, George, 3
Casagrande, June, 159–60
Casey, Tim, 95
Chandler, Raymond, 106–17
The Big Sleep, 106–7, 113–15
“Lines to a Lady with an Unsplit Infinitive,” 108–9
“Oscar Night in Hollywood,” 109–12
Charles Scribner’s Sons, 139
Chatto & Windus, 97
Chesnutt, Charles, 161
Chicago Manual of Style, 2, 8, 91–95, 100, 115, 174–75, 182
Chicago Tribune, 45, 57
Churchill, T. O., 46
Civil rights and King’s “Letter from Birmingham Jail,” 161–65
Clark, Stephen, 36–39
Cobbett, William, 35–36n
Coleridge, Samuel Taylor, 105
Colon, the, 13, 14, 46–48
Comma, the, 13, 14, 39–40
Common School Journal, 47
Courts and the semciolon, 54–55, 57–70, 73–89
Massachusetts and Semicolon Law, 4, 55, 57–70, 73–74, 84
Sacco and Vanzetti case, 82–85
Shakespeare’s The Merchant of Venice, 84–88
State v. Merra, 76–80, 82, 89
Supreme Court decisions, 61–62, 74, 79–80
Dash, the, 151–56
De Aetna (Bembo), 14–16
Declaration of Independence, 3, 165
Defoe, Daniel, 105
“Descriptivists,” 41–42n
Diagramming sentences, 36–39
“Diary” (Solnit), 119–22
Díaz, Junot, 161
Dickinson, Emily, 153
Dictionary of Modern English Usage, A (Fowler), 48–49
“Die Marquise von O . . .” (Kleist), 153, 204n
Eats, Shoots and Leaves (Truss), 6, 94, 116–17
Elements of Chemistry (Lavoisier), 26n
Elements of Style, The (Strunk), 2, 94, 177
Eliot, T. S., 165
English Grammar, An (Murray), 27–28, 30
English Grammar, An (Quackenbos), 50, 51
English Grammar in Familiar Lectures (Kirkham), 28–32, 34
English Grammar of William Cobbett, The (Ayres), 35–36n
Era of the Dash, 153–54
Erasmus, Desiderius, 46–47
“Eroteme,” 32n
“False syntax,” 28, 176
Faulkner, William, 130
Felton, Oliver, 47
Fernandina Island, 123–24
Festa, Paul, 95
First-person books, 126–27
Fitzgerald, John F. “Honey Fitz,” 68–69, 68–69n
Fitzgerald, William, 63
Fowler, H. W., 48–49, 177–78
Fowler, W. C., 52, 94
Frazee, Bradford, 46
Fuckups, 179n
Golden Bowl
, The (James), 138
“Golly,” 95, 97
Grammarians, 2–4, 23–43, 46–52
Grammar of English Grammars, The (Brown), 23–24, 29–32, 42–43, 47–48
Grammar rule books, 2–4, 8–9, 46–55, 91–95, 97–99. See also American grammar wars
Grammar rules, 6–8
against the, 173–83
Grammatical pauses, 51–52
Greek language, 31–32n, 34, 41
Griffo, Francesco, 14
Haring, Keith, 16
Harker, James, 95
Harvard University, 83–84, 144–45
Heller, Erich, 148
Hermeneutics, 74
High Window, The (Chandler), 113n
Historical narrative nonfiction books, 122–23n
History of the semicolon, 2–4, 13–93
birth of the semicolon. See Birth of the semicolon
in the courts and law. See Courts and the semciolon
grammar wars in America. See American grammar wars
trends and fashion. See Trends and fashion in punctuation
Hoare, Philip, 128, 132
Holmes, Oliver Wendell, 62n
“Honey Fitz” (cocktail), 69n
Humanism (humanists), 14, 17–19
“If” (Kipling), 111n
Immigration Restriction League, 83
Improved Grammar (Frazee), 46
Indianapolis Journal, 54–55
Induction (inductive method), 49–50
James, Henry, 137–45, 148–51
The Golden Bowl, 138
New York Edition, 139–41
The Portrait of a Lady, 141–44, 145, 149–51
James, William, 138–39, 144–45
Jefferson, Thomas, 164–65
Johnson, B. B., 68
Kalisch, Samuel, 77–79
Kennedy, John F., 68n
Kennedy, Joseph, 68–69n
Kentucky Derby, 112–13, 116
King, Martin Luther, Jr., 161–65
Kipling, Rudyard, 111n
Kirkham, Samuel, 28–32, 34
Kleist, Heinrich von, 153, 204n
Küçük, Harun, 94
Language Learners, 99
Language Masters, 99–101
Latin, 14–15, 20, 34, 41
Lavoisier, Antoine, 26n
Lawrence, D. H., 136
Legal formalism, 87–88n
Legal hermeneutics, 74
Legal issues. See Courts and the semciolon
Lent, 154, 154n
Letter, The (movie), 142–43
“Letter from Birmingham Jail” (King, Jr.), 161–65
Semicolon Page 11