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Semicolon: The Past, Present, and Future of a Misunderstood Mark QUOTES

Semicolon: The Past, Present, and Future of a Misunderstood Mark QUOTES

1 " The semicolon was born in Venice in 1494 "

― Cecelia Watson , Semicolon: The Past, Present, and Future of a Misunderstood Mark

2 " Whether it’s the Manual that peers down from your bookshelf, or Strunk and White, or the APA style guide, or Fowler, or Lynne Truss, it’s fair to ask why we consider these books authoritative, and if there might not be some better way to assess our writing than through their dicta. "

― Cecelia Watson , Semicolon: The Past, Present, and Future of a Misunderstood Mark

3 " At times I've felt less like a punctuation theorist than like a punctuation therapist "

― Cecelia Watson , Semicolon: The Past, Present, and Future of a Misunderstood Mark

4 " There’s an extent to which your analysis of your own work is an interesting jumping-off point for criticism, but there’s equally an extent to which your writing is its own entity and exists independent of you and your intentions and your hopes and dreams. "

― Cecelia Watson , Semicolon: The Past, Present, and Future of a Misunderstood Mark

5 " Kurt Vonnegut was unequivocal in his last book, advising writers, “Do not use semicolons. They are transvestite hermaphrodites representing absolutely nothing. "

― Cecelia Watson , Semicolon: The Past, Present, and Future of a Misunderstood Mark

6 " So many discrete racist or otherwise malignantly biased acts can be excused as meaningless matters of happenstance, just as a puzzle piece looks like an abstract blob of nothing until hundreds of them are assembled all together and then suddenly--we see. "

― Cecelia Watson , Semicolon: The Past, Present, and Future of a Misunderstood Mark