Semicolon. Cecelia Watson

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it violated the precepts of The Chicago Manual of Style (at the time, Bob was chair of the board of the press that publishes the Manual). I insisted that the semicolon in question was a perfectly legitimate interpretation of one of the umpteen semicolon rules the Manual laid out, and round and round Bob and I went for weeks, grandstanding about the meaning of the Manual’s rules. Finally, during one of these heated debates, it occurred to me to wonder: Where do they come from, these rules I cherish so much, and believe I know so well?

      But before I can try to persuade you of this, we have to look the past square in the face. Ever since grammar rules were invented, they have caused at least as much confusion and distress as they have ameliorated; and people living one hundred years ago had passions about semicolons that varied from decade to decade and person to person. In this regard, they aren’t so different from us after all: when you looked at the semicolons on the front of this book, you probably felt something. Was it hate, like Paul Robinson? Anger? Love? Curiosity? Confusion? The diminutive semicolon can inspire great passion. As you’ll see in the chapters that follow, it always has.

      * Robert J. Richards at the University of Chicago. As of 28 March 2018, Bob’s entry on Wikipedia contains semicolon usage that I’m quite certain would rankle him: ‘Richards earned two PhDs; one in the History of Science from the University of Chicago and another in Philosophy from St Louis University.’ Bob, I swear it wasn’t me!

       Deep History

      The Birth of the Semicolon

      One of these humanists, Aldus Manutius, was the matchmaker who paired up comma and colon to create the semicolon. Manutius was a printer and publisher, and the first literary Latin text he issued was De Aetna, by his contemporary Pietro Bembo. De Aetna was an essay, written in dialogue form, about climbing volcanic Mount Etna in Italy. On its pages lay a new hybrid mark, specially cut for this text by Bolognese type designer Francesco Griffo: the semicolon (and Griffo dreamed up a nice plump version) is sprinkled here and there throughout the text, conspiring with colons, commas, and parentheses to aid readers.

      In humanist times, just as in our own, hand-wringing sages forecast a literary apocalypse precipitated by too-casual attitudes to punctuation. ‘It is not concealed from you how great a shortage there is of intelligent scribes in these times,’ wrote one French humanist to another,

      and above all in transcribing those things which observe style to any degree; in which unless points and marks of distinctions, by which the style

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