Watson covers impressive ground in this short book, skittering back and forth like a sandpiper at the shores of language's Great Debates. There are fascinating forays into how grammarians "created a market for their rules," the strange history of diagramming sentences and the racial politics of so-called standard English. Watson is sharpest when acting a bit like a semicolon herself, perceiving subtle connections and burrowing into an argument. Whatever her subject, her targets are always pedants, those acolytes of "actually," all those who profess to love language but seek only to control it.
The New York Times - Parul Sehgal
02/25/2019
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.
A deceptively playful-looking book that turns out to be a scholarly treatise on a sophisticated device that has contributed eloquence and mystery to Western civilization . . . Delightful.” — Mary Norris, The New Yorker
“Lively . . . Watson covers impressive ground in this short book, skittering back and forth like a sandpiper at the shores of language’s Great Debates. . . fascinating.” — New York Times
“What? Sit on the beach reading about punctuation? Yes, when it’s as fun, rangy, and witty as this.” — Philadelphia Inquirer , “Big Summer Books”
“Pity the poor semicolon, punctuation’s wallflower, wrongfully maligned and too seldom asked to dance. Fortunately, this modest little powerhouse has found its defender. [Watson] is a witty, elegant writer with no nonsense about her.” — New York Times Book Review
“Delightful, enlightening . . . The twisty history of the hybrid divider perfectly embodies the transience of language, the ways it can be shaped by cultural shifts that have nothing to do with correctness or clarity.” — Vulture
“A delightful rabbit hole that I think even those who are not punctuation-obsessed will find eye-opening and strangely reassuring. If you enjoyed Between You & Me, Woe Is I, or Eats, Shoots & Leaves, Semicolon . . . is for you.” — The Amazon Book Review, “Weekend Reading”
“Look, some people just enjoy arguing about punctuation. It’s in their nature. But if your enthusiasm for this polarizing little mark stems from adoration and inquisitiveness (and only occasionally the haughty knowledge that you’re right), Cecelia Watson’s “biography” of the semicolon will be a delightful companion.” — Elle , “Thirty Best Books to Read This Summer”
“Charming . . . an argument for deep knowledge and style awareness, moving beyond strictures to something educated, intuitive, and graceful.” — New York Journal of Books
“Buoyant . . . thought-provoking . . . this little book is something of a page-turner.” — Santa Fe New Mexican
“[A] witty, wily account.” — Minneapolis Star Tribune
“Essential reading . . . Watson asks us to look hard at rules that pretend to be objective and consider their origins and implications; and in doing so, she advocates a skeptical, searching attitude that could usefully be taken toward many aspects of American life beyond grammar.” — Boston Globe
“Winsome.” — Harper’s Magazine
“Your inner word nerd will love it.” — Hello Giggles, “11 Best New Books to Read in July”
“All unloved things have their defenders . . . and the semicolon could not have asked for a better one than historian Cecelia Watson. . . . If anything will convince you of its artistic beauty and historic importance, it will be Semicolon .” — Babbel
“Charts the rise and fall of the punctuation mark while examining how traditional grammar rules make us less successful at communicating with each other than we might think.” — PureWow, “8 Books We Can’t Wait to Read in July”
“Brisk, lively, witty, and provocative.” — Audiophilie, D.A.W. Winner of AudioFile Earphones Award
“An impeccably readable meditation.” — Booklist
“In this impressive debut, Watson . . . takes readers through a lively and varied ‘biography’ of the semicolon. . . . The stress on compassionate punctuation lifts this work from an entertaining romp to a volume worth serious consideration.” — Publishers Weekly
“Informed and witty . . . from chapter to chapter, [Watson] 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.’” — Kirkus Reviews
“In Cecelia Watson’s hands, what starts as an exploration of the obscure origins of a modest punctuation mark becomes a slyly profound proof of the value of creative freedom itself. Grammar fiends and poetic anarchists alike will find Semicolon inspiring, challenging, and delightful.” — Adrian Johns, Allan Grant Maclear Professor of History, University of Chicago
“Intimidated by the semicolon? Fear not: Cecelia Watson’s sprightly history is the perfect antidote to punctuation pedantry. It’s also a paean to the music of language by a writer with a silver ear.” — Lorraine Daston, Director of the Max Planck Institute for the History of Science and Visiting Professor, The Committee on Social Thought, University of Chicago
“Cecelia Watson takes the history and logic of this strange, unbalanced punctuation mark and with an eloquently natural voice transforms them into a work of sane, funny, and humanistic philosophy; [couldn’t resist] it’s superb.” — Daniel Menaker, author of The African Svelte : Ingenious Misspellings That Make Surprising Sense
Charming . . . an argument for deep knowledge and style awareness, moving beyond strictures to something educated, intuitive, and graceful.
New York Journal of Books
Delightful, enlightening . . . The twisty history of the hybrid divider perfectly embodies the transience of language, the ways it can be shaped by cultural shifts that have nothing to do with correctness or clarity.
Lively . . . Watson covers impressive ground in this short book, skittering back and forth like a sandpiper at the shores of language’s Great Debates. . . fascinating.
Buoyant . . . thought-provoking . . . this little book is something of a page-turner.
Pity the poor semicolon, punctuation’s wallflower, wrongfully maligned and too seldom asked to dance. Fortunately, this modest little powerhouse has found its defender. [Watson] is a witty, elegant writer with no nonsense about her.
New York Times Book Review
A deceptively playful-looking book that turns out to be a scholarly treatise on a sophisticated device that has contributed eloquence and mystery to Western civilization . . . Delightful.
Look, some people just enjoy arguing about punctuation. It’s in their nature. But if your enthusiasm for this polarizing little mark stems from adoration and inquisitiveness (and only occasionally the haughty knowledge that you’re right), Cecelia Watson’s “biography” of the semicolon will be a delightful companion.
“Thirty Best Books to Read This Summer” Elle
[A] witty, wily account.
What? Sit on the beach reading about punctuation? Yes, when it’s as fun, rangy, and witty as this.
Brisk, lively, witty, and provocative.
D.A.W. Winner of AudioFile Earphones Award Audiophilie
Essential reading . . . Watson asks us to look hard at rules that pretend to be objective and consider their origins and implications; and in doing so, she advocates a skeptical, searching attitude that could usefully be taken toward many aspects of American life beyond grammar.
An impeccably readable meditation.
Intimidated by the semicolon? Fear not: Cecelia Watson’s sprightly history is the perfect antidote to punctuation pedantry. It’s also a paean to the music of language by a writer with a silver ear.
Charts the rise and fall of the punctuation mark while examining how traditional grammar rules make us less successful at communicating with each other than we might think.
“8 Books We Can’t Wait to Read in July PureWow
Your inner word nerd will love it.
All unloved things have their defenders . . . and the semicolon could not have asked for a better one than historian Cecelia Watson. . . . If anything will convince you of its artistic beauty and historic importance, it will be Semicolon .
Winsome.
Cecelia Watson takes the history and logic of this strange, unbalanced punctuation mark and with an eloquently natural voice transforms them into a work of sane, funny, and humanistic philosophy; [couldn’t resist] it’s superb.
In Cecelia Watson’s hands, what starts as an exploration of the obscure origins of a modest punctuation mark becomes a slyly profound proof of the value of creative freedom itself. Grammar fiends and poetic anarchists alike will find Semicolon inspiring, challenging, and delightful.
An impeccably readable meditation.
An audiobook devoted to the semicolon? Unlikely as that might sound, this little history of grammar’s most misunderstood punctuation mark is, at just under four hours, brisk, lively, witty, and provocative; it is a genuine pleasure for the ear. Narrator Pam Ward is particularly skilled at rendering topics that might seem narrow, highly specialized, and intended only for a niche market. Her narration is purposeful and expressive, and at the same time unhurried and unforced; in other words, it is a fine artistry of pacing and balance that enlivens without dramatizing. Here, given so many noteworthy authors and fine passages to quote—she simply shines. D.A.W. Winner of AudioFile Earphones Award © AudioFile 2019, Portland, Maine
An audiobook devoted to the semicolon? Unlikely as that might sound, this little history of grammar’s most misunderstood punctuation mark is, at just under four hours, brisk, lively, witty, and provocative; it is a genuine pleasure for the ear. Narrator Pam Ward is particularly skilled at rendering topics that might seem narrow, highly specialized, and intended only for a niche market. Her narration is purposeful and expressive, and at the same time unhurried and unforced; in other words, it is a fine artistry of pacing and balance that enlivens without dramatizing. Here, given so many noteworthy authors and fine passages to quote—she simply shines. D.A.W. Winner of AudioFile Earphones Award © AudioFile 2019, Portland, Maine
2019-04-08
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.
