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Articles by Cecelia Watson
John McWhorter Takes a Serious Look at Profanity
Nonfiction May 4, 2021, 5:00 a.m. ET NINE NASTY WORDS English in the Gutter — Then, Now, and Forever By John McWhorter Drop an f-bomb into conversation, and its detonation lights up the right hemisphere of your brain. That right-brained roguishness, the linguist John McWhorter tells us, sets profanities apart from ordinary words, which are mediated by the comparatively sober left brain.
The Four Best Language and Grammar Books Published in 2019
Do you need a stocking stuffer for that wordy person in your life? Fortunately, 2019 has been a good year for books about grammar, style, and all things editorial. Here are some of the highlights.
How do you text? Unpacking the battle between 'raindrop' and 'waterfall' texters
When Drake’s hit single “Hotline Bling” came out in 2015, it wasn’t the singer’s much-memed dancing that struck me the most. Rather, it was the clever economy of his opening lament: “You used to call me on my cellphone.” That one line tells us everything. Calling someone is unusually intimate, even unique. Drake is 32, solidly millennial; and many millennials report avoiding the phone, even — especially — when it comes to friends and family. They’d much rather text.
The Virtues of the Semicolon; or, Rebellious Punctuation
In 1906, Dutch writer Maarten Maartens—acclaimed in his lifetime but now mostly forgotten—published a surreal, satirical novel called The Healers.
Semicolon: The Past, Present, and Future of a Misunderstood Mark
I’ve long considered punctuation a form of musical notation, each mark its own sort of rest. There’s the quarter rest of the comma, the half rest of the semicolon, the three-quarter rest of the colon or the em-dash, and the whole rest of the period: full stop. All this is in keeping with how I think of language, as a medium in which meaning evolves not just from words, their definitions, but also from the sound and rhythm of the lines.
‘Semicolon’ a lively, scattershot study of a mark that breaks all the rules
SEMICOLON:The Past, Present, and Future of a Misunderstood Mark By Cecelia Watson Ecco, 214 pp., $19.99 Although she intermittently provides a history of its evolving usage over the centuries, the semicolon is not the real subject of Cecelia Watson’s lively, scattershot book.
SEMICOLON by Cecelia Watson Read by Pam Ward
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.
The Birth of the Semicolon
By Cecelia Watson August 1, 2019 Arts & Culture The semicolon was born in Venice in 1494. It was meant to signify a pause of a length somewhere between that of the comma and that of the colon, and this heritage was reflected in its form, which combines half of each of those marks. It was born into a time period of writerly experimentation and invention, a time when there were no punctuation rules, and readers created and discarded novel punctuation marks regularly.
A Defense of the Semicolon and Other Adventures in the English Language
Nonfiction Jul 30, 2019 THE DICTIONARY WARS The American Fight Over the English Language By Peter Martin Martin’s account of the dictionary feuds of the 19th century is as lively and entertaining as the battle itself. In one corner was Noah Webster; in the other, Joseph Emerson Worcester. Both seasoned lexicographers, they realized that Americans were coining new words, using old ones in new ways and preserving usages the British had dropped.
Semicolon: The Past, Present, and Future of a Misunderstood Mark (Hardcover)
$19.99 Available In-Store 1 on hand, as of Mar 23 4:01am (LANGUAGE ARTS/LINGUISTICS/LITERACY) Description “Delightful.” —Mary Norris, The New Yorker A page-turning, 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?
Nine Things You Didn’t Know About the Semicolon
Jonathan Russell Clark sits at his desk, writing an essay about free indirect discourse. Surrounding him are books by authors who employ the technique with considerable skill: Jane Austen, Gustave Flaubert, James Joyce, Virginia Woolf, Stephen Dixon, and Joshua Ferris. He recalls a time when he did not even know what free indirect discourse was, and a time, later, when he knew the term but viewed it more as a descriptor than a crucial component.
Semicolon - Cecelia Watson - Hardcover
Skip to content Share This Title: The Past, Present, and Future of a Misunderstood Mark by Cecelia Watson On Sale: 07/30/2019 $19.99 Spend $49 and get FREE shipping on HC.com Quantity: About Product Details Praise “Delightful.” —Mary Norris, The New Yorker A page-turning, 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?
9 Things You Didn’t Know About the Semicolon
In the delightful Semicolon: The Past, Present, and Future of a Misunderstood Mark, Cecelia 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.
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