Jul. 14 2010

De inventione punctus

All signs sug­gest punc­tu­a­tion is in flux. In par­tic­u­lar, our signs that mark gram­mat­i­cal (and some­times seman­tic) dis­tinc­tions are wan­ing, while those denot­ing tone and voice are wax­ing. Fur­ther­more, signs with a slim graph­i­cal pro­file (the apos­tro­phe and comma, espe­cially) are hav­ing a rough go of it. Com­pared to the smi­ley face or even the ques­tion mark, they’re too visu­ally quiet for most casual writ­ers to notice or remem­ber, even (or espe­cially) on our high-def screens.