Brownlow's Knoxville Whig, and rebel ventilator. [volume] (Knoxville, Tenn.) 1863-1866, 1864-01-16
Punctuation.

/ The Dean Of Canterbury says 0n this sub
ject:
Il remember, when ] was young in prin-
ting, once correcting the punctuation of a
proof sheet, nd complaining of the liber-
( ties which had been taken with my manu-
script The publisher quietly answered me
! that punctuation ,raS left to the comp0sitors.
I And n precious mess they made OF it. The
great enemies to understanding anything
printed in our language are the commas
And these are inserted by the confessions
/ without the slightest conjunction q every
possible occasion. Many words areNE rule
always hitched off with two commas; one
before and one bchind-aurscd. as the omni-
bus company would call it. Too is one of
the words; h0wcrer, another also another
the sense in almost every such case being
disturbed, if not destroyed by the process.
| remember beginning a sentence with
( However true this may be- When it came
in ;hc proof the inevitable comma was after
the however, thus of course making nom
sense of my unfortunate sentence.
have some satisfaction in rejecting that
in the course Of editing the Greek text, |
believe have destroyed more than a thou
sand commas which prevented the text be
ing properly understood. One very provo
king case is that where two adjcctivcs come
, together, belonging to the same noun-sub-
stantivc. Thus, in printing Il nice young
man, a comma is placed after nice, giving
rs YOU will Observe Il very different sense
from that intended; bringing before us the
: fact that Il man is both nice and young,
whereas the original sentence introduced to
us a young man that was nice. Thus too
in the expression a great btack dog 4p1inted
without commas every body knoxs what
we mean; but this would be printed a great,
black dog Take again case where mean
ing is intensified by adjcctves being repeat
cd-as the ,ride rite rorid, the deep deep sea.
Such expressions you are almost invariably
find printed the 'ridc 1ri9s r0rld, the deep.
deep seq, thereby making them, il Judged
by rule ut all. absolute nonsense.
Still, though too many commas are bad,
too few are not without Inconvenience also.
| saw the other day notice of the Society
for Promoting the Observance of the Lord
day which was founded in 1868, giving the
notice that the day. not the society, was foun-
dcd in that year. Had the date been 1851,
instead of Is. an awkward Interpretation
might have been Impossible.
While am upon stops, a word is neces
Sarv concerning notes Of admiration. \
note of admiration consists as we know OF
point with an upright line suspended over
it, strongly suggestive of Il gentleman jump
ing off the ground with amazcment' These
Shrjehs, as they have been called, are scat
tered up and down the page by compositOrs
without any mercy. If one has written the
words D sir, rs they ought to be written,
viz. with plain capital O and no stop,
and then a comma after sir. our friend tho
compositOr is sure to write OF with a shrek
@ and put another shriy'> after SIR. Use,
in writing, as few as possible of these nui-
sances They always make the sense weak
cr, where YOU can possibly do without them.
The only case | know Of where they are re
ally necessary is where the language is
pure exclamation, as in How beautiful is
night or O that | might find him.