Perhaps you read my latest popular-science book, Colons: How the New Science of Punctuation Is Changing Our Book Titles. I intended it to change the conversation about how we have conversations. I showed how evolutionary fight-or-flight reactions — that ineffably mammalian moment of confusion and hesitation — led to the semicolon. It was well received, and once we had a blurb that compared it to Malcolm Gladwell, they printed another 100,000 copies. There was even talk of a movie, with Al Pacino playing the exclamation point, and Gérard Depardieu as the accent grave.
A few weeks ago I got a call from a journalist asking about some of the quotes. In the chapter “From Borges to Borge; or, What Does a Comma Sound Like in Spanish?” I’d profiled an Argentinian man who made a clicking sound every time he encountered a comma when reading out loud.
Comments