Death by punctuation
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Elle Cordova's latest short:
The cast includes Detective Question Mark, Mr. Exclamation Point, Madame Quotation, Professor Ellipsis, Miss Emily Dash, Reverend Apostrophe, Dr. Parenthesis, Lady Comma, Lord Period, and Colonel Colon.
Along with a few jokes and many tributes, the 2,325 comments also mention some other characters, e.g. "All the while not noticing that the long-suffering but loyal Footnote had slipped out of the room."
Chris Button said,
June 3, 2026 @ 1:36 pm
Nicely done.
Has anyone ever conducted a study on which languages encourage long, multi-line sentences with several embedded clauses?
I'm not talking about changes in literary style over the ages. Rather I'm wondering if syntactic structures might play a role.
I'm thinking how a long paragraph in Japanese might contain far fewer periods (full stops) than an equivalent paragraph in English.
AntC said,
June 3, 2026 @ 7:57 pm
Glad to see Miss Emily Dash (Dickinson?) "just call me emm" has been rehabilitated from the foul accusations of AI slop.
Peter Cyrus said,
June 4, 2026 @ 4:05 am
Maybe I'm part of the problem, but I find that our current punctuation is deficient in providing tools to indicate the relationships between clauses. Making each into its own sentence seems staccato, there's no progression. Colons and semis are too subtle ; at least leave a space in front. I overuse dashes and ellipses, as well as rhetorical questions (does that include questions I then answer myself? I think so.)
I've read Strunk & White, and Eats, Shoots, and Leaves. Maybe we need to migrate to a notation for intonation that ignores grammar. Or maybe I just need to be edited.
Anthony Bruck said,
June 4, 2026 @ 2:34 pm
I could see ignoring intonation entirely. From the only non-prescriptive book on punctuation I know of (The Linguistics of Punctuation, by Geoffrey Nunberg) we find these examples where the punctuation changes the meaning:
He reported the decision: we were forbidden to speak with the chairman directly.
He reported the decision; we were forbidden to speak with the chairman directly.
Also noted is the absence of these punctuation marks in transcription of speech.