Semicolon

by Cecelia Watson

  The summary of formalism above is a quotation from an article by two scholars who applied a strict legal formalist reading of the Constitution to Article IV, Section III, which contains a semicolon that could be interpreted to mean West Virginia, Kentucky, and Maine are unconstitutional. The authors, who rescue the three potentially unconstitutional States from oblivion in their conclusion, write that it is necessary to consult treatises on punctuation written during the time the law was composed. They come to the rather curious conclusion that “the meaning of the semicolon has not changed appreciably in the last 213 years”—which might come as a surprise to readers accustomed to looking at either rules or usage from that era. Since the authors get that crucial bit of historical detail wrong, maybe West Virginia, Kentucky, and Maine don’t exist after all! See Vasan Kesavan and Michael Stokes Paulsen, “Is West Virginia Unconstitutional?” California Law Review vol. 90, no. 2 (March 2002): 396. See also Justice Antonin Scalia’s dissent in Tennessee, Petitioner v. George Lane et al., 541 U.S. 509 (2004), for a characteristic example of Scalia’s use of historical dictionaries to justify an interpretation of the law.

  *There is now a seventeenth edition of the Manual (1144 pages, 40 comma rules), but its preface is almost exclusively taken up with reflections on changes necessitated by new writing and reading technologies, such as digital publishing and social media. At the end of the preface, however, the editors take care to mention that the seventeenth edition is still guided “by the principles that have been handed down through earlier editions.” Presumably “elasticity” remains among them.

  *In fact, his punctuation was “the one thing I am inflexibly particular about. . . . It’s got more real variety about it than any other accomplishment I possess, & I reverence it accordingly.” 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.

  *An errant apostrophe making an its into an it’s.

  *It can be hard to slow ourselves down and really contemplate a piece of text. That’s probably always been true, but for me, at least, typing has made it more difficult; when most of my writing is done with my fingers flying over a keyboard, I can transcribe an author’s words faster than my brain can properly take them in. If I really want to discipline myself and look closely at a writer’s style, I still copy out sections of that author’s work by hand, pen on paper. I’m a firm believer that this is the best and most reliable way to learn to be a better stylist, not just when it comes to punctuation but for the other elements of style as well. I believe this because I’ve seen it work, over and over, throughout the years. I recommend this technique to anyone who considers themself a student of language, no matter what age and ability.

  *Welsh is wrong that thinking about punctuation is “nonsense,” but of course he might nevertheless be right that I need to get a fucking life and a proper job.

  *Possibly this paragraph is also a sly world-weary riff on Rudyard Kipling’s inspirational poem “If,” although one would have to ask Chandler to know for sure.

  *In the late 1800s, incidentally, a racehorse named Semicolon did exceptionally well in the major U.S. races, but he began to tire around the turn of the century—much like the semicolon itself.

  *I count two in The Big Sleep, for instance, and one in The High Window.

  *The problem is magnified in historical narrative nonfiction. The labor that can go into summoning the atmosphere of another era is boggling—a historian might spend hours poring over old newspapers to find out how hot some particular day was, just for half a sentence adding color to the past.

  *One of my favorite college professors was an ex-lawyer who retained an attorney’s prose sensibility when reading essays. Any superfluous or vague adjective was excised, leaving a red looping line with “DOES NO WORK” written neatly beside the wound. I sometimes imagine what Moby-Dick might look like if he dug into the heap of adjectives and adverbs sitting atop nearly every noun and verb.

  *The reviewer meant “limbo” as in a place of oblivion, but for the modern reader more familiar with the West Indies dance, the idea of Melville bending over backwards to scoot under an ever-lowering bar of literary decency works just as well to capture this critic’s opinion.

  *Modern reader “Sandra,” reviewing The Portrait of a Lady on Amazon UK, has an apt diagnosis to offer: “Author just likes to write, almost anything than get to the crux of the story.” She gave it one star.

  *It is true that the semicolon can be used to cover up sloppy reasoning, but that scarcely seems to be a problem inherent in, or exclusive to, that particular punctuation mark. You want to see some imprecise thoughts? I can manufacture some for you, with naught but a handful of words and maybe a period. Nonetheless, these glossings-over that often accompany the semicolons Robinson encounters (he refers in particular to student papers) generate a sense of repulsion in him, and he himself eschews the mark wherever possible.

  *Although I’m not a fan of Anscombe’s imposing her own yen for systematization and certainty on Wittgenstein here, let no one think Anscombe wasn’t a badass. A dazzling and powerful thinker whose extraordinary abilities were acknowledged even in the boys’ club of mid-1900s philosophy, she took no shit from anyone. Once, in Boston, she attempted to enter a formal restaurant wearing trousers. When told ladies were not allowed to enter in trousers, she simply whipped them off and walked on in. See Jane O’Grady, “Elizabeth Anscombe: An Exhilarating Philosopher, She Took to Sporting a Monocle and Smoking Cigars,” The Guardian, January 10, 2001.

  *I haven’t got a religious bone in my body, but I enjoy the Lenten ritual of challenging oneself with deprivation of some kind.

  *A stop without stopping completely. Who wants the full stop right now, with its silence and finality like a red button pressed, or a clock striking midnight?

  *For a taste of some of the problems with Wallace’s essay, see the Language Hat blog’s entry “David Foster Wallace Demolished,” http://languagehat.com/david-foster-wallace-demolished/, accessed August 5, 2018. In addition to the mostly sentence-level problems that Language Hat highlights, there are glaring argument-level flaws. Those flaws would require a longish essay to elucidate properly, and this book is not the place. The essay is useful here as an example of a very common and very misguided expectation that users of “standard” English are exempt from justifying that choice.

  *“Sprachgefühl Necessitates Our Ongoing Tendance.”

  *This happens with grammar rules of all kinds, not just punctuation. When I worked at Yale, I rode the Metro North trains from New York to New Haven regularly, and I often stopped at one of the kiosks near the train to get a gin and tonic for the journey. One night, after an especially exhausting conference in the city, I walked up and ordered “two gins and tonic.” The person manning the kiosk was briefly speechless at being confronted with such an idiot as myself who couldn’t even order properly. Finally, perhaps after considering the possibility I might be too drunk already to serve, she asked me if I meant “two gin and tonics.” I opted not to go into the pluralization rule and said, “Sure. The gin is just more important to me than the tonic.”

  *Fuckups can be fun, but it matters who we’re laughing at. If you want to, feel free to print a giant poster-size copy of the previous sentence and have a good giggle at this author with multiple degrees ending a sentence with a preposition. But don’t be like Bristol’s so-called Banksy of punctuation or Acción Ortográfica Quito and go around marking up people’s store billboards to correct grammar mistakes. That makes you a vandal and a mean-spirited pedant.

  *I lived in Berlin on and off between 2007 and 2013. When I go back to visit now, even though I’m rusty from lack of practice, I find Berliners are much keener to speak German with me now that their city has been occupied by hordes of British and American expats, many of whom don’t bother to learn a single word of German since they ca
n sail along fine speaking English. Perhaps that’s made Berliners look at German learners in a new and more forgiving light.