Semicolon

February 25, 2019
In this impressive debut, Watson, a historian and philosopher of science, takes readers through a lively and varied “biography” of the semicolon. She covers the punctuation mark’s history (which began in 1494 Venice, in a travel narrative about scaling Mount Etna) and changing grammatical function, from creating rhythm to separating two independent clauses, along with the love/hate relationship writers have long had with it. Watson argues, with growing passion as the book progresses, that the semicolon, and punctuation in general, must be deployed with flexibility, not rigid adherence to precedent, and even finds court cases to prove her point, including a controversy in 1900 Massachusetts over whether the semicolon in an onerously restrictive state liquor statute was meant to be read as a comma instead, thus making the law far more liberal. Watson lands an especially strong point with her takedown of the inflexibility and “rule mongering of the David Foster Wallace types” and especially of Wallace himself, for a “speech he liked to give to black students whose writing he perceived to be... ‘non-standard.’ ” The stress on compassionate punctuation lifts this work from an entertaining romp to a volume worth serious consideration. (July)Correction: An earlier version of this review misspelled the author's first name.

An audiobook devoted to the semicolon? Unlikely as that might sound, this little history of grammar's most misunderstood punctuation mark is, at just under four hours, brisk, lively, witty, and provocative; it is a genuine pleasure for the ear. Narrator Pam Ward is particularly skilled at rendering topics that might seem narrow, highly specialized, and intended only for a niche market. Her narration is purposeful and expressive, and at the same time unhurried and unforced; in other words, it is a fine artistry of pacing and balance that enlivens without dramatizing. Here, given so many noteworthy authors and fine passages to quote--she simply shines. D.A.W. Winner of AudioFile Earphones Award � AudioFile 2019, Portland, Maine