Granta magazine has an online series, Mark Up, for which they “invited writers to tell us their thoughts on punctuation and grammar”; so far, though, the only one that seems to fall under “grammar” is a cranky rant about the verb “to gift” by Christian Lorentzen, who sounds like a nonagenarian even though he looks considerably younger, so I’m going to focus on the others, which are far more interesting: Harriet Armstrong on what we really mean when we punctuate our text messages with ‘lol’, Madeline Cash on her mother’s use of ellipses, Will Harris on Alice Notley’s ‘wrong’ quotation marks, Maggie Millner on pauses, silences and choosing where to end the line, Grace Byron on the question mark, Rebecca Perry on parentheses, Akshi Singh on X (to indicate a kiss), and Adam Mars-Jones on lesser-known punctuations marks (¶, ç, ⁁). I suppose it’s worth saying that these essays are not the work of linguists and doubtless contain statements that will not pass muster to the eagle eye of a specialist, but I like this sort of thing. I particularly enjoyed the Will Harris piece, which begins:
The first thing you notice when you open Alice Notley’s epic poem The Descent of Alette is the quotation marks: there are lots of them and they’re in all the wrong places. This is how it starts:
‘One day, I awoke’ ‘& found myself on’ ‘a subway, endlessly’
‘I didn’t know’ ‘how I’d arrived there or’ ‘who I was’ ‘exactly’
‘But I knew the train’ ‘knew riding it’ ‘knew the look of’
‘those about me’
It’s clear that quotation marks are not being used here in ordinary ways – to indicate either direct speech or quotation from another text. Perhaps they’re performing another of their main roles: to point out a received idea, suggesting the author’s knowledge (and disavowal) of a choice of words – this is a ‘classic’ usage. Reading Alette, you sense Notley weighing up each phrase in this way, inspecting every word through the wry spectacles of quotation.
a cranky rant about the verb “to gift” by Christian Lorentzen
Oh my, yes .. an embarrassment.
“In any context the transitive ‘gift’ or ‘gifted’ is used, a simple ‘give’ or ‘gave’ will do.”
Evidently no feeling for the nuances of English. “I gifted him a book” is not at all synonymous with “I gave him a book.”
Also, he clearly does not know what “transitive” means. (But then, people of this kind decry the “passive voice” without actually being able to identify it.)
Actually, he perhaps (surely?) does know what “transitive” means, if he thinks for a bit, but is unable to specify exactly what usage he is objecting to: he may be thinking of a contrast with “gifted”, as in “a gifted child”, but he lacks enough knowledge of, or interest in, English grammar to explain wherein the difference actually lies.
He probably just felt that throwing in a technical grammar term randomly made him sound more like a “buff with some rudimentary training” than a “crank.”
I once copy-edited some transcribed interviews. The most challenging part was adding commas, which the transcriber had had no use for at all. I learned then just how much of an art commatizing can be, not expressible by any facile rules. You can’t stop paying attention to syntax and to intonation. Put in too many commas, and it looks like a written text, not a spoken one. Too few, and the reader is lost. Once you’ve achieved a balance consistent with what you think the speaker should sound like to the reader, you need to maintain it consistently for the rest of the interview. Unless the tone and the tempo have changed…
I wouldn’t say I got to be an expert at it, but I at least got to see how difficult it was.
Mr. Mars-Jones’s “parapunctuation” conceit makes my head hurt.
A cedilla is not a punctuation mark at all, let alone a parapunctuation mark.
While Adam Mars-Jones’ name was familiar, I’ve never actually read any of his œuvre. Accordingly, I looked at his WP page, and discovered that he won an annual award for Bitchiest Book Review for
https://www.theguardian.com/books/2011/jan/23/by-nightfall-michael-cunningham-review
It does look like worthy winner, I have to say. Ouch.
On the other hand, here is a distinctly positive review from that selfsame newspaper of Pillion, based on Mars-Jones’ Box Hill:
https://www.theguardian.com/film/2025/may/18/pillion-review-50-shades-of-bsdm-wallace-and-gromit-in-brilliant-bromley-biker-romance
Mars-Jones’s “parapunctuation” conceit makes my head hurt.
makes me reach for my revolver.
I’ve always had a great fondness for the pilcrow symbol: its evolution from a marker of change in ancient times, to its current use as a non-printing character, somehow feels like a metaphor for my life.
@DE: Ouch indeed. “The book’s pages are filled with thoughts about art, or (more ominously) Thoughts about Art.”
I’ve always had a great fondness for the pilcrow symbol
Yes, me too. Up the pilcrow!
As, I suppose, a “boomer” who uses a lot of ellipses, but occasionally types “lol”, I’d say – even based on Ms Armstrong’s & Ms Cash’s analyses – that I use them both for the same thing: the way Ms Armstrong uses “lol”. If I understand it correctly.
It’s an open-ended end (or no end at all, just a stopping) to a written communication, which invites the reader to fill in the blank/continuation based on shared experience & fellow-feeling. I expect the intended recipient to continue the thought without either of us needing to pin it down precisely with words.
I expect I’ve even done it here, just assuming most Hatters would know where it’s going; but might likely comment with words if their own particular continuation would bring in something unexpected or novel which then we would all, or most of us, be delighted to share in.
Or maybe I’m just madder than most.
Most of us are madder than most!
The mention of the “Bitchiest” review reminded me of Roger Ebert who wrote that he “hated, hated, hated, hated…this movie,” North, by Rob Reiner, to which the late RR responded, “If you read between the lines, [it] isn’t really that bad.”
Speaking of epistolary x, the now-weakened Washington Post (14 Feb 2014) cites someone with my name disagreeing with the OED:
“The x’s in [Gilbert] White’s [1763] letter could possibly mean kisses, but it is more likely they meant blessings….”
Cf, Defoe, 1719. Sometimes both. Kiss-alone attested c. 1880ff.
Put in too many commas, and it looks like a written text, not a spoken one.
And risks leaving the reader commatose?
You… you comma commeleon!
Who you callin’ a commie?
https://youtu.be/CKpbNvDg6zY?si=GFgj9mGXCeHOph3J
Comma comma comma yeah yeah yeah yeah
The online OED has updated the ‘kiss’ sense of X to agree with Stephen Goranson: they’ve moved the 1763 letter into square brackets (and added Robinson Crusoe also in square brackets), and put in a note disclaiming their previous interpretation,
(I.1.b is ‘cross’, III.10 is ‘Christ’.) Their earliest example of a row of x’s — or crosses — to mean kisses is currently:
Under special circumstances, correctly used quotation marks can make a text look like that.
“We have” “the bravery” “to bring” “back” “slavery”…
Kinda touching on punctuation: “what” or “what.” without a question mark, in recent years popular in social media comments, text messages, cartoons, and other such lowly communications of the yoot. It expresses a slightly testy reaction to something apparently nonsensical. I love it a lot.
Language Hat posted on WHAT back in 2008:
Memories! I see I said in that thread (January 26, 2022 at 11:15 am) “All these years later, I’m still wondering about this usage and its history,” and that’s still true.
https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/FlatWhat
Yes, David Marjanović provided that link immediately after my quoted comment. But as I said then, “I’m afraid TVTropes, addictive as it is, does not count as scholarly history. Surely some linguist has dealt with this somewhere!”
Greater minds than mine thought alike.
also the semantics of “what”, “what.”, and “wut” would be interesting to see properly thought through.
also “lolwut”
Then I have to repeat how I replied at the time: “Of course not, but that article lists so many examples you could do corpus linguistics on it.”