Word: comma
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...each qualification, follows divergent ideas out of sight through cat's cradles of parentheses and dashes. He is as fond as Faulkner of the present participle. When it seems that he must stop, affix a period and begin a new sentence with "He said . . .", Simon merely drops a comma to catch his breath and continues with "saying . . ." If Simon's chapter-sentences are read quickly, and if the reader does not follow his natural inclination to stop and sort out thoughts and thinkers, the effect can be astonishing. The author skillfully creates a sense of frenzy and foreboding...
...material is clearly organized, with cross-references where appropriate. Carey takes up seriatim the various punctuationl signs: period, colon, semi-colon, comma, parentheses, brackets, exclamation and question marks, single and double quotation marks, hyphen, apostrophe, capitals, italics, and paragraph indentation. And, although they are somewhat ancillary to the main topic, he adds two chapters--one on proofreading (I found only two slips in proofreading in the whole book); and the other on common grammatical and stylistic errors in such matters as participial agreement, the barbarous use of "following" for "after," the "due to"-"owing to" distinction, the coupling of relative...
...provision that any NATO member could come back in ten years to suggest changes in the treaty structure. Last week, as the NATO Council got together in conference rooms and on the flag-banked platform of Washington's Departmental Auditorium, nobody suggested that a single comma of the original treaty ought to be changed...
Although many G. & S. buffs feel that the operas can only benefit from the removal of copyright restrictions ("Throw out the petition!" wrote one newsman. "Every last cliché, comma and full stop of it!"), Purist Alderley was more determined than ever to protect W. S. Gilbert from the depredations of popular arrangers. One, last week, even wanted to give lolanthe a "honkytonk beat" and retitle it Zaza Has a Piazza...
...reflecting. Now it is 9. In two hours or so, writing with ink in a pinched, illegible script, abbreviating wherever possible ("negotiate" becomes "nego"), he composes 750 to 1,000 carefully chosen words. He declaims his handiwork into a Dictaphone, punctuation and all: "It is not probable comma I think comma that on the whole . . ." After his staff types and checks his message, it is read over the long-distance telephone to an automatic recording device at the Herald Tribune in New York...