"Delightful, enlightening... The twisty history of the hybrid divider perfectly embodies the transience of language." -- Vulture

The semicolon. Stephen King, Hemingway, Vonnegut, and Orwell detest it. Herman Melville, Henry James, and Rebecca Solnit love it. But why? When is it effective? Have we been misusing it? Should we even care?

In Semicolon, Cecelia Watson charts the rise and fall of this infamous punctuation mark, which for years was the trendiest one in the world of letters. But in the nineteenth century, as grammar books became all the rage, the rules of how we use language became both stricter and more confusing, with the semicolon a prime victim. Taking us on a breezy journey through a range of examples -- from Milton's manuscripts to Martin Luther King Jr.'s "Letters from Birmingham Jail" to Raymond Chandler's The Big Sleep -- Watson reveals how traditional grammar rules make us less successful at communicating with each other than we'd think. Even the most die-hard grammar fanatics would be better served by tossing the rule books and learning a better way to engage with language.

Through her rollicking biography of the semicolon, Watson writes a guide to grammar that explains why we don't need guides at all, and refocuses our attention on the deepest, most primary value of language: true communication.

"What? Sit on the beach reading about punctuation? Yes, when it's as fun, rangy, and witty as this." -- The Philadelphia Inquirer, "Big Summer Books"

"A scholarly treatise on a sophisticated device that has contributed eloquence and mystery to Western civilization... Delightful." -- The New Yorker

• We started tracking this book on June 27, 2019.
• This book was $12.99 when we started tracking it.
• The price of this book has changed 48 times in the past 2,020 days.
• The current price of this book is $2.99 last checked 23 hours ago.
• This book is at its lowest price in the past six months.
• This lowest price this book has been offered at in the past year is $1.99.
• The lowest price to date was $1.99 last reached on January 27, 2024.
• This book has been $1.99 2 times since we started tracking it.
• The highest price to date was $14.99 last reached on March 25, 2022.
• This book has been $14.99 2 times since we started tracking it.

• Text-to-Speech: Disabled
• Lending: Disabled
• Print Length: 221 Pages
• File Size: 15,701 KB