Word: comma
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Dates: during 1920-1929
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...more than a quarter of a century she worked on University publications, again and again taking proof home for hard work out of hours. Not a comma escaped her if concentrated intelligence could prevent. In her love of detail there was no dull routine; there was deathless enthusiasm; no detail could deaden her; to whatever she touched she gave life. Indeed, she and a comma together would furnish any third part with lively commany...
...felt to enhance the impression that the writer strives to create . . . In advertising puffs . . . especially in advertising snowy linen . . . and beautiful silver . . . and trips to the Riviera . . . and other nice things . . . it has superseded all other punctuation. . . . But it is also being widely used in novels . . . where the comma has gone into a decline . . . and the reader reads in a coma . . . Even in the psychological study. . The Locomotive God . . . the interesting and painful experiences of the author's youth . . . are separated not by the passage of time . . . but by dots in groups of three. . . . Nor are they the type...
...dash, especially in letters which amuse when exhumed by biographers. And as one lapses into the more familiar denotation, it is easy to sce how this new usage follows in the tradition of moving pictures and illustrated papers, in lifting from the people the burden of thought. The comma brings the reader to a sharp pause, and a consideration of the ground covered, but these other tracks flow gently on through vague words of pleasant connotation, rather impressively indeed. And unprovoked to thought, the reader can wander after them through a haze of prettily blurred pictures. This is no solemn...
Wiser readers, imperturbed, found a more satisfactory explanation of the unpleasant likeness between photographed dog and alleged master. They surmised (rightly) that a dull Herald Tribune copyreader or proofreader had clumsily elevated a comma after the word Hughes so that it indicated a possessive instead of an appositional phrase. Further they surmised (rightly) that Miss Charles, alert owner of the prize-winning Schnauzer, had given him a name which his appearance richly merited...
...What a real warmth it has" concluded Plimpkin as he added a comma to the erratum of Jones and a great, fat semi-colon to the marginal notes of Thwait. They smiled at each other benignly. The lovely lady was watching the fire, watching the flame which always was reaching, trying...