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Semicolon - Cecelia Watson - 2019
The Past, Present, and Future of a Misunderstood Mark
By: Cecelia Watson
Narrated by: Pam Ward
Length: 3 hrs and 47 mins
Unabridged Audiobook
Release date: 07-30-19
Language: English
Genre: Nonfiction, Social Sciences
Publisher: HarperAudio
Format: mp3 64/44.1 stereo
Includes Reference Material (pdf)
Publisher's Summary
A pause-resisting, existential romp through the life and times of the world’s most polarizing punctuation mark.
The semicolon. Stephen King, Hemingway, Vonnegut, and Orwell detest it. Herman Melville, Henry James, and Rebecca Solnit love it. But why? When is it effective? Have we been misusing it? Should we even care?
In Semicolon, Cecelia Watson charts the rise and fall of this infamous punctuation mark, which for years was the trendiest one in the world of letters. But in the 19th century, as grammar books became all the rage, the rules of how we use language became both stricter and more confusing, with the semicolon a prime victim.
Taking us on a breezy journey through a range of examples - from Milton’s manuscripts to Martin Luther King, Jr.’s “Letters from Birmingham Jail” to Raymond Chandler’s The Big Sleep - Watson reveals how traditional grammar rules make us less successful at communicating with each other than we’d think. Even the most die-hard grammar fanatics would be better served by tossing the rule books and learning a better way to engage with language.
Through her rollicking biography of the semicolon, Watson writes a guide to grammar that explains why we don’t need guides at all and refocuses our attention on the deepest, most primary value of language: true communication.
©2019 Cecelia Watson (P)2019 HarperCollins Publishers
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