gloss: ‘a shippe in Tamyse [Thames]’
clarification: ‘Julie [his editor, Julius Schwarz]’
expansion (here, of an abbreviation in a manuscript): ‘mo[re] correct’
And I mustn’t forget ‘[sic]’, a Latin word meaning ‘thus’ – the conventional way of drawing attention to an authorial error or idiosyncrasy in a quotation or a piece of reported speech, as in ‘havnt [sic]’. It’s a convenient means of showing that an error is not the writer’s, but is found in the original text.
{ } The brace was introduced in the seventeenth century as a way of vertically linking units (such as lines, numbers, and musical staves). The word is from French, referring to the width between the two arms. I don’t use it at all in this book (apart from in this chapter), and I can’t think of any reason why I should. They’re typically found in technical or instructional writing to specify a limited set of options: a series of numbers: ‘{1, 3, 5, 7, 9}’
a set of choices: ‘Choose an appropriate size {small, medium, large}’
a combination of notes: ‘the chord {a, c, e}’
In informal handwriting, it’s a useful option when the writer wants to highlight a group of lines. Terminology again varies: they’ve been called curly brackets and squiggly brackets.
< > Angle brackets or chevrons are rare in traditional writing, but are increasingly visible as a result of electronically-mediated communication, where they enclose HTML commands (such as for italics), and also act as a way of unambiguously identifying a URL or an email address without interference from any surrounding punctuation. Here’s an example from earlier in this book: The website
Literary editors also make use of angle brackets when transcribing a manuscript that includes an illegible or lost section. Anything within these brackets is a conjecture:
several of the people
Any of these correlative marks can be used, in pairs or singly, for artistic purposes. All have been used in electronic communication as a resource for creating emoticons. And there are even more unusual cases in poetry, where the observation that parentheses include content of secondary importance needs to be turned on its head. In a poem, what is within the parentheses is always significant – often more so than in the surrounding text.
Interlude: The poet of parentheses
E E Cummings has been called ‘the poet of parentheses’, from the way he manipulates round brackets in an extraordinary number of creative ways, breaking the rules of everyday usage, and making them work along with spacing and other punctuation marks to produce pictorial poems. Several of his poems use multiple examples of parentheses, but in ‘mortals)’ the device is used just once, to great effect. Imagine a pair of circus trapeze artists as you read it.
mortals)
climbi
ng i
nto eachness begi
n
dizzily
swingthings
of speeds of
trapeze gush somersaults
open ing
hes shes
&meet&
swoop
fully is are ex
quisite theys of re
turn
a
n
d
fall which now drop who all dreamlike
(im
The opening line has no left-facing parenthesis, and it’s not immediately clear why. The meaning of the text is clear enough: the grammar tells us that the acrobats are mortals who climb into each other. We then see them climbing to their launch height – somewhat uncertainly, judging by the broken words. Their movement towards each other gathers speed, losing word spaces along the way (&meet&). A drifting sequence of lines of gradually increased length reflects their swooping motion, and leads to a point of re turn, the split word forcing us to move along with the acrobats. We feel their downward fall in the vertical arrangement of a n d. The final line, with its opening bracket, leaves the poem literally hanging in the air. It requires a resolution, and we find it by looking back up to the opening line, where that closing bracket is now explained, and we begin the reading process all over again, moving again with the acrobats.
The inverted parentheses thus provide a frame for the poem, bringing its end into graphological contact with its beginning. The effect is semantic as well as pictorially symbolic. Cummings wrote in a letter (31 October 1958) that the aerialists are ‘transformed from “mortals” into “im” mortals because they risked their lives to create something beautiful’. And he adds: ‘Finally they all disappear into the place from which they appeared.’ The poem’s punctuation, and especially the parentheses, shows it all.
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Marks of inclusion: ‘quotation marks’
Quotation marks are the other convention that falls outside the punctuation hierarchy. Like round brackets, they can be used to include text of any size, from a part of a word to a series of paragraphs. And like round brackets, there’s a certain amount of terminological uncertainty. A traditional British usage is to call them inverted commas, a term that dates from the eighteenth century. But quotation marks (also first used in the eighteenth century) has come to be more frequently used, along with quote marks and simply quotes. In using these, though, we need to bear in mind that the marks do a great deal more than simply ‘quote’. Speech marks, similarly – the term of choice in the present-day British language curriculum – tell only a part of the story.
Take these examples, all from the previous chapter. Only one of them is a genuine quotation:
they identify a gloss: ‘lunulae (“little moons”)’
they highlight a commonly used phrase: ‘parentheses offer writers the chance to “say two things at once”.’
they identify a previous reference: ‘the “magic number seven” principle’
they enclose a set of examples (as in the present list)
they enclose an actual quotation: ‘The train “arriving late as usual” was full of tourists.’
This list also illustrates the unique characteristic of this punctuation mark: it appears in two guises – single (‘ ’) and double (“ ”). The shape of the latter has motivated a common children’s description: sixty-sixes and ninety-nines.
The double mark is the earlier, going back to the diple (p. 15), which was placed in the margin to show a quotation, or a piece of text of special significance. Over the centuries, this evolved into a pair of semi-circular marks placed opposite the line(s) to which attention was being drawn. They were located only outside the line(s) to begin with, but by the end of the sixteenth century we see them within, and raised above the following line of type. A typical example is seen in Shakespeare’s First Folio, when Belarius reflects on a popular sentiment (Cymbeline, 4.2.26):
“Cowards father Cowards, & Base things Syre Bace;
“Nature hath Meale, and Bran; Contempt, and Grace.
Printers thought of them as a special use of commas, calling them turned or inverted commas. This was an accurate enough name to begin with, as (in examples like the one from Cymbeline) only the opening of the quoted text was marked. But it became semi-accurate once writers and printers realized they needed to show the place where a quotation ended, because the closing double commas are not inverted. The use of closing commas was a practice that emerged during the eighteenth century, when the popularity of the novel grew, and conversational turns among the various characters had to be clearly indicated. The literary fashion was for direct speech. Authors needed a ‘mark of silence’, and this was met by using the double mark but reversing its direction. There was a logic behind the change: if inverted commas introduced speech, then un-inverted commas would end it.
The use of double marks appealed to writers in the eighteenth century, when heavy punctuation was favoured, and it is recommended by Lindley Murray in his influential grammar. The early nineteenth-century printers, such as George Small-field and John Wilson, all recognize double marks a
s the norm, and reserve single for a quotation within a quotation. But in the later part of the century, Horace Hart, in his Rules for Oxford University Press, reversed the practice, recommending single quotes for the first quotation and double for the second. The English-printing world has been divided ever since. Double quotes are the norm in the USA, single in the UK, with other countries pulled one way or the other, according to publishing house and genre. A country’s newspapers, for example, might use a different style from its textbooks.
The move from double to single was made on pragmatic grounds, in an age when heavy punctuation was falling from favour. Single marks were felt to be simpler, more elegant, less cluttered. During the twentieth century, they were thought to conform more to the general trend to simplify the appearance of punctuation. Ergonomic arguments supported the aesthetic ones: on a keyboard, double marks were a mite more awkward, as they required the use of the shift key. Economic arguments were put forward too: single quotes saved space, and thus paper. But none of these arguments was sufficiently persuasive to dislodge the practice from those countries and publishers that favoured it. And in any case the proponents of double marks had a supporting argument of their own, of a semantic kind: double marks avoided any confusion with the apostrophe:
‘I’ve put food next to all the dogs’ bowls’
“I’ve put food next to all the dogs’ bowls”
The problem is greater when vertical (or ‘dumb’) marks are used instead of typographic (or ‘curly’) marks, as then all three – opening quote, closing quote, and apostrophe – look identical. Perhaps that is why people began to call curly marks smart quotes. They provide a semantically intelligent solution.
The printers had to solve several problems arising out of the use of quotation marks. What to do, for example, if a quotation extends over several paragraphs? Some writers inserted a mark at the beginning and end of each paragraph. The practice now is to have opening marks at the beginning of each paragraph, but a closing mark only at the end of the whole quotation. The reasoning is that, if there were a closing mark at the end of each paragraph, it could mislead the reader into thinking either that the quotation has come to an end (when it hasn’t) or that the next paragraph is a totally different quotation (when it isn’t).
And where should quotation marks be placed in relation to other punctuation marks? Hart sees no problem if there is a good semantic reason, as in:
(a) ‘Why does he use the word “poison”?’
(b) Alas, how few of them can say, ‘I have striven to the very utmost’!
(c) But I boldly cried out, ‘Woe unto this city!’
In (a) and (b), the question mark and exclamation relate to the sentence as a whole, not the quoted element; in (c) the exclamation relates just to the direct speech. In all such cases the marks needs to be placed, as Hart put it, ‘according to the sense’. And in all these cases double-marking should be avoided when the quotation is a sentence, even though grammatical logic might dictate otherwise.
Alas, how few of them can say, ‘I have striven to the very utmost.’!
But I boldly cried out, ‘Woe unto this city!’.
This is a pragmatic principle: minimizing visual clutter.
It took the printers and stylists several decades to work their way through the issues raised by quotation marks. Even today usage is by no means universal. What to do, for example, when both the main sentence and the quotation have the same grammatical status? In the following example, both are statements. Should the period go inside or outside the closing quote mark?
(d) We need not ‘follow a multitude to do evil.’
(e) We need not ‘follow a multitude to do evil’.
Hart comments:
the almost universal custom at the present time is for the printer to include the punctuation mark within the quotation marks at the end of an extract, whether it forms part of the original extract or not.
This he thinks is ‘bad practice’, and he recommends that the mark (whatever it might be – period, colon, comma …) be placed outside the quote mark, as in (e) above. But he adds a caveat: ‘unless the author wishes to have it otherwise’. His advice fell on deaf ears in the USA, and thus we see both (d) and (e) in use today, wherever in a sentence a quotation appears:
I wanted to recite ‘To be or not to be’, but my mind went blank. [British English]
I wanted to recite ‘To be or not to be,’ but my mind went blank. [American English]
But the British practice is not entirely uniform, for – apart from the uncertainty over authors’ wishes – we find the marks inside the closing quotes in cases of direct speech after a reporting clause:
Mary said, ‘You’re right.’
‘You’re right,’ Mary said.
This is a rare case where it’s permissible to end a sentence with a comma. The point needs to be carefully taught to young learners, who otherwise might think it perfectly acceptable to write:
‘You’re right.’ Mary said. or ‘You’re right.’, Mary said.
They would have grammatical logic on their side, if they did this, but punctuation conventions are rarely a matter of logic. Far more often, it comes down to pragmatic considerations of tradition, identity, and taste. And whichever set of practices you use, there is a further pragmatic rule: be consistent.
The same principle applies to the other uses of inverted commas, where their function is not to quote at all. I gave some examples at the beginning of this chapter, but there are many more, with a range of functions that is hinted at by the various labels that have been used for them: scare quotes, sneer quotes, shudder quotes, cute quotes. All the terms point in the same direction: a word or phrase is being used differently from its normal use, and the marks tell the reader that they can’t take it for granted, but must look for a special meaning in the mind of the writer.
That is a ‘solution’.
Who knows how many cases have been ‘cured’?
It’s clear that the writers are disassociating themselves from the words in some way, but in what way, exactly? Are they being ironic, sarcastic, emphatic, distancing, sceptical, apologetic, critical, drawing attention …? We need to look carefully at the context. It could even be that the word is a genuine quotation, as in newspaper headlines and reports (though it’s not always clear from whom):
Crisis demands ‘strong’ response [newspaper headline]
He has referred to ‘bullying’ tactics.
There’s a particular problem if they are used in advertising for emphasis, as they inevitably convey a sceptical meaning:
Great ‘reductions’
‘New’ models
Sales executives beware! Style-guide advice is to use scare quotes as little as possible, as they are often ambiguous. But they remain popular, and – uniquely for a punctuation mark – can also appear while speaking in the form of air quotes (or finger quotes), when the first two fingers of each hand are raised and waggled while the focused word is being said (usually in a distinctive tone of voice and preceded by a short pause). As this only works if the listener is looking at you, air quotes are of limited use. Saying the words ‘quote unquote’ provides an alternative.
After this, it’s a relief to find straightforward cases of the marks being used unambiguously in serious settings, such as:
titles of short works, such as poems, songs, short stories, article titles, chapter headings, and TV episodes: Three years later Eliot wrote ‘The Waste Land’
linguistic glosses and translations: We see the same etymology in Welsh llan ‘church’
citation forms: ‘color’ is an American spelling
proverbial and aphoristic expressions: I think it’s a case of ‘Least said, soonest mended’
a nickname within a real name: Joe ‘King’ Oliver
But even in these cases, there can be usage variation. How long does a story have to be before its title warrants the more imposing italics? Some people refer to Wordsworth’s ‘Prelude’, some to his
Prelude. And should it be ‘color’ or color? Publishing houses take different views about such matters.
There has always been an element of daring in the use of quotation marks. In the early days, writers and typesetters experimented with them, exploring their expressive potential along with other typographic features. Direct speech was sometimes printed in italics, with or without the marks. Double marks were sometimes used for direct speech and single marks for reported speech:
He said “I am satisfied”.
He said that ‘he was satisfied’.
And there were alternating usages to show a change of speaker:
“Are you ready?”
‘I am.’
“Have you got the case?”
‘Of course.’
In mainland Europe, quotation marks of either kind were widely avoided, with a new speaker shown by a new line and a dash – and this practice was sometimes followed by writers in English, such as James Joyce in Ulysses. Joyce disliked their cluttered appearance, especially when doubled. He called them ‘perverted commas’.
Idiosyncratic uses are common in literature. T S Eliot, for example, uses them for questions in ‘The Waste Land’, but not for responses:
‘What is that noise?’
The wind under the door.
‘What is that noise now? What is the wind doing?’
Nothing again nothing.
They’re usually omitted when a writer is reporting what a character is thinking. And several novelists avoid them altogether (p. 92). In fact, there are a number of genres today when direct speech is used without quotation marks. We don’t see them in dramatic dialogue, for example (see the illustration on p. 140). Nor do we see them in verbatim reports, such as court proceedings or parliamentary debates, where a colon introduces the speech (as shown on p. 133). And in formal writing, if the quotation becomes lengthy, the advice is to display the quote as a separate paragraph, indented, and often with white space above and below (a block quotation), as can be seen many times in this book (see the quotation from Hart above). Here again, though, there is fuzziness, for how long is ‘lengthy’? More than two lines? More than three? That’s another pragmatic question: lengthiness is in the eye of the publisher.
Making a Point Page 26