Semicolon Book

You’re listening to A Way with Words, the show about language and how we use it.

I’m Grant Barrett.

And I’m Martha Barnette.

Kurt Vonnegut was no fan of semicolons. All they do, he said, is show you’ve been to college. Donald Barthomay didn’t like them either. He said semicolons were ugly, ugly as a tick on a dog’s belly.

I happen to like semicolons. How do you feel about them, Grant? Do you like ticks on a dog’s belly?

No, I think well-placed semicolons or a series of well-placed semicolons can be like skipping a stone across the surface of a body of water.

Until the sentence sinks at the end like the stone in the lake, right?

Well, there’s that. But you like semicolons. They have their place for you.

I’m a fan. But no matter how you feel about them, you’ll never look at them the same way after you read this book that I really want you to read. It’s called Semicolon, The Past, Present, and Future of a Misunderstood Mark. And it’s by Cecilia Watson, who is not a linguist, but that’s actually really helpful for this book.

She’s a historian and a philosopher of science, as well as a teacher of writing at Bard College. And she writes about how the first semicolon appeared in 1494. And at that time, and for the next couple of centuries, the rules of punctuation were sort of do-it-yourself. It was a matter of each writer’s individual taste and judgment.

And back then, punctuation marks were more like rests on a sheet of music. They just sort of helped the reader sound out what the writer intended. And then in the 18th century, she writes that self-appointed grammarians tried to apply the rules of Greek and Latin to English with only limited success. And then in the 19th century, grammarians were devising systems for punctuation that would help them market their books to a public that was increasingly impressed by the study of natural science.

She writes, grammar rules began as an attempt to scientize language because science is what parents wanted their children taught in public schools. Those grammarians often disagreed vehemently with each other. But meanwhile, their books began to look more like science texts, including diagrams. That’s where we get diagramming sentences.

And Watson’s book is smart and it’s witty. It’s often poetic. It’s packed with liveliest sizes, like the kind of, you know, when you have a professor in college and you just hang around to hear what their footnotes are or their little asides during lectures.

She talks about how more recently the presence of a single semicolon in a legal document can make a crucial difference in the interpretation of a law, sometimes with comic consequences and sometimes with tragic ones. But what really strikes me, Grant, is Watson’s own journey in writing this book, because she set out to write a biography of a punctuation mark and describes herself as a reformed grammar fetishist, the sort of person who used to feel that her love for English was best expressed by means of irritation at the sight of a misplaced apostrophe or outright heart palpitations over a comma splice.

But by the time she finished writing this book, she said she changed everything about the way she views grammar. She writes, I still love language, but I love it in a richer way. And that as hyperbolic as it may sound, she says that reconsidering our relationship with grammar can make us better people by, quote, focusing us on the deepest, most primary value and purpose of language, true communication and openness to others.

That wasn’t the conclusion that I expected from this book. She is one of our people. She’s one of our people. Because that journey that she took is so common to people who spend any real time truly looking at what language actually is.

I’ve never met someone who stays a grumpy grammarian.

Oh, that’s an interesting point. I’ve never, once they really get into it, actually look at the truth of language.

Right. Where’s the fun in that? They always move along that path. They always become someone who seeks delight.

Yes, exactly. And she clearly has done a wonderful job there.

You sound impressed.

I am impressed, and I love that she comes to it from the perspective of a historian of science.

Oh, I love that, too. Sometimes outsiders, when they come into language, they just make a mess of things. But it sounds like she’s done a right job of it.

Yeah, that book is Semicolon, The Past, Present, and Future of a Misunderstood Mark, and it’s by Cecilia Watson. We will link to that on the website.

If you’ve got a book to recommend to us and to everyone who’s listening, let us know, 877-929-9673. Or email words@waywordradio.org or tell us on Twitter @wayword.