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What’s in a name? THAT A BRACKET BY ANY OTHER NAME WOULD SECTION MATTER OFF? So, here’s a secret about me… ! isn’t actually my favourite sign. I love it, but no. My favourites are (and I’m not ashamed to say so) BRACKETS! Or parentheses, depending from which side of the Atlantic you’re reading. Brackets (I […]
Hear ye, hear ye, Greengrocer’s, breathe a sigh of relief
hear ye, hear ye, Greengrocer’s, breathe a sigh of relief August saw a lot of things the world did not need, such as anti-corona-mask protests everywhere, the Trumpian banshee Kimberley Guilfoyle screaming her head off about the best which was yet to come, and her husband’s self-published 29,99 dollar book on the apocalyptic plans of commie candidate […]
Crassly Stupid: Welcome to the World of Grammar (and Rhetoric)
crassly stupid: welcome to the world of grammar (and rhetoric) A while ago, at the end of May or beginning of June, I wrote an encyclopedia entry on the role of punctuation in literature (and not a cameo appearance at that!), and was thrown back to the basics – or so I thought: the basics […]
The ‘sensuall-lyfe’ of Punctuation: Hyphen Part 3
Since it’s early stages of my project, I am focussing on brackets in romance in prose, but eventually I’d like to cover brackets in all kinds of romance, prose, poetry, and drama. So, as preparation for that second stage (and because it’s fun), I called up two manuscripts of John Harington’s Orlando Furioso translation. One, a beautifully-bound clean book […]
Bracket Spotting
Yesterday, I chatted to a friend via text, trying to find a day to take a walk together, and touch base. We hadn’t seen each other for a very long time, although we live in the same town (entirely my fault!). Sunday, I said to her, would be best, as on all the other days […]
Remember the Porter! Or the bracket on the 5th of November
ve been teaching Volpone by Ben Jonson today, and, in my preparation for the seminar, discovered the wonderful British Library pages on early modern drama and dramatists. They also showed an autograph letter of Jonson to Robert Cecil, James’ secretary of state, and secret service guy, written just days after the revelation of the Gunpowder Plot in 1605. On […]
Damnable Practices?
Damnable Practices, 1619, a ballad from the Pepys collection, via English Broadside Ballad Archive, EBBA 20058. The article pointed towards some fascinating knee-jerk responses by our bodies to danger, such as something looking like a spider over-riding inattentional blindness, that is, us not noticing something obvious if we are focussing on something else (that gorilla-basketball experiment). […]