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.

May 1, 2019
A brisk study of the history and meaning of an especially contentious punctuation mark. What is a semicolon for? What rules guide its usage? Consensus is hard to come by. Indeed, as Watson (Language and Thinking Program/Bard Coll.) explains in this informed and witty book, efforts to pin the semicolon down have only made it slipperier. A 15th-century Venetian publisher introduced the mark at a time when punctuation was employed more loosely, to signal pauses and underscore rhythms rather than serve grammatical correctness. Since then, despite diktats from the Chicago Manual of Style and elsewhere, satisfying guidance remains fleeting. Fittingly but also a bit frustratingly, the author structures her book in a semicolon-ish way; the chapters are loosely related but not always closely connected. A history of the semicolon gives way to an extended digression on squabbles among 19th-century grammar gurus; a discussion of how semicolons impacted Boston drinking laws and a death sentence gives way to an op-ed riff on the messiness of legal interpretations; close analyses of passages by Raymond Chandler, Irvine Welsh, and Herman Melville flow into Watson's own usage advice and critiques of the perceived snobbery of high style in general. If the author isn't padding, she sometimes seems determined to stretch the scope of the book beyond its stated subject. Yet from chapter to chapter, she brings a gadfly's spirit to the proceedings, thoughtfully lobbying for written English that resists restrictions and recognizes that "rules will be, just as they always have been, inadequate to form a protective fence around English." The value of the semicolon may be no clearer by the end. But then, it's a form of punctuation defined by ambiguity. Sprightly and scholarly, this will appeal to grammar geeks who are patient with Watson's free-range sensibility.

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June 1, 2019
Given her enigmatic, esoteric subject, historian Watson has crafted an impeccably readable meditation on the semicolon. Watson travels back in time to the punctuation mark's birth and rise in popularity, and to moments in history when the placement of a semicolon has literally meant the difference between life and death. For all the literary gobbledygook associated with proper punctuation, there is even more fuss over phrasing when it comes to the law. After reviewing the annals of the colon's spunky cousin, Watson employs authors from Herman Melville to Rebecca Solnit to see it in action. Unlike a manual of style, however, this book's examples portion isn't long. Watson instead enforces a thesis stating that devoted adhesion to the rules of Standard Written English is a privilege afforded to very few. She reminds readers that there is an entire world of storytelling and communication that has nothing to do with how a sentence is spliced. It puts punctuation in perspective, which will be of particular significance to grammar sticklers, the readers most likely to pull this one from the shelf.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2019, American Library Association.)