Punctuation 1
This is the first of a series of posts I plan to write on the subject "Punctuation".
(First let me explain that I use the British style on my journals. Americans put commas and periods inside quotation marks; Britons will put the punctuation inside if it belongs to the quote and outside otherwise. So direct speech retains punctuation inside inverted commas in British English. This, I believe, is the most logical use. That's how it's done in the Latin languages.)
I'll begin in media res, shock treatment style, by an example. When I was a teen, I read "Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde", by Robert Louis Stevenson, in a translation, and I loved it. Recently I read the English original, and I almost couldn't read it because of the semicolon usage. This is how the story begins:
MR. UTTERSON the lawyer was a man of a rugged countenance that was never lighted by a smile; cold, scanty and embarrassed in discourse; backward in sentiment; lean, long, dusty, dreary and yet somehow lovable. At friendly meetings, and when the wine was to his taste, something eminently human beaconed from his eye; something indeed which never found its way into his talk, but which spoke not only in these silent symbols of the after-dinner face, but more often and loudly in the acts of his life. He was austere with himself; drank gin when he was alone, to mortify a taste for vintages; and though he enjoyed the theatre, had not crossed the doors of one for twenty years. But he had an approved tolerance for others; sometimes wondering, almost with envy, at the high pressure of spirits involved in their misdeeds; and in any extremity inclined to help rather than to reprove.
Seriously, it bothered me so much that I researched and found this reference saying that "This use of the semicolon is possibly influenced by RLS's youthful admiration for Baroque stylists such as Sir Thomas Brown [...]".
So it seems to be a matter of style, or an idiosyncrasy of the author. What do you think of Stevenson's punctuation style?
(First let me explain that I use the British style on my journals. Americans put commas and periods inside quotation marks; Britons will put the punctuation inside if it belongs to the quote and outside otherwise. So direct speech retains punctuation inside inverted commas in British English. This, I believe, is the most logical use. That's how it's done in the Latin languages.)
I'll begin in media res, shock treatment style, by an example. When I was a teen, I read "Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde", by Robert Louis Stevenson, in a translation, and I loved it. Recently I read the English original, and I almost couldn't read it because of the semicolon usage. This is how the story begins:
MR. UTTERSON the lawyer was a man of a rugged countenance that was never lighted by a smile; cold, scanty and embarrassed in discourse; backward in sentiment; lean, long, dusty, dreary and yet somehow lovable. At friendly meetings, and when the wine was to his taste, something eminently human beaconed from his eye; something indeed which never found its way into his talk, but which spoke not only in these silent symbols of the after-dinner face, but more often and loudly in the acts of his life. He was austere with himself; drank gin when he was alone, to mortify a taste for vintages; and though he enjoyed the theatre, had not crossed the doors of one for twenty years. But he had an approved tolerance for others; sometimes wondering, almost with envy, at the high pressure of spirits involved in their misdeeds; and in any extremity inclined to help rather than to reprove.
Seriously, it bothered me so much that I researched and found this reference saying that "This use of the semicolon is possibly influenced by RLS's youthful admiration for Baroque stylists such as Sir Thomas Brown [...]".
So it seems to be a matter of style, or an idiosyncrasy of the author. What do you think of Stevenson's punctuation style?