Punctuation optional (was: Radio Broadcasting - winging it-Eats, Shoots and Leaves)


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Posted by Allan Lang on December 19, 2003 at 05:11:36 from 202.61.171.25 user Allan_Lang.

In Reply to: Re: Radio Broadcasting - winging it-Eats, Shoots and Leaves posted by Robert Dilley on December 18, 2003 at 18:17:27:

I cannot find the reference now, but I remember reading of an author -- at least a couple of hundred years back I believe -- who published a book with no punctuation in the text; and then added several pages of various forms of punctuation at the end with the exhortation to the readers to add them to the text as they saw fit.

A Pickle for the Knowing Ones Plain Truths in a Homespun Dress, the autobiography/philosphy of Timothy Dexter (1747-1806), the second edition of which included a page of punctuation marks for the critics of the first edition so "thay may peper and solt it as they plese". (Accuracy and consistency in spelling was not Dexter's strong point)

Difficult to say what was his strong point. Before he went senile in his later years he was widely regarded as the biggest fool in America. But as he modestly put it "I was very Lukkey in spekkelation".

At 23 he married a rich widow, and used her fortune for a string of foolish investments. He bought State Bonds which in post Revolutionary America were selliog at a fraction of face value because everyone knew they would never be redeemed, until US Treasurer Hamilton decided those debts were "the price of liberty" and should be redeemed at full value.

Waggish businessmen advised him to ship bed-warming pans and fur mittens to Jamacia. Jamacia had no need for warming pans, but there was a shortage of molasses strainers and ladles. And also a Swedish sea captain desparately looking for a cargo to take back to Europe before Christmas.

He also shipped coals to Newcastle. They arrived in the middle of a mining strike.

Then there was the time he was persuaded the "wales" on the ship he has ordered would need whalebone. Which he purchased to much general amusement. And when the vagaries of women's fashion suddenly called for corsets, who had a lock on the supply of whalebone on the East Coast of the USA?




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