[lit-ideas] Re: Weigh-in on parentheticals
- From: wokshevs@xxxxxx
- To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx, Robert Paul <rpaul@xxxxxxxx>
- Date: Sat, 15 Nov 2008 14:58:49 -0330
There's also the "use/mention (or refer to)" distinction. As just exemplified.
Here's another one, to the second power:
"I'd challenge RP on 'parenthenticate' in a game of Scrabble."
Walter O.
President,
Society for the Promotion of Private and Phonetic Punctuation
Quoting Robert Paul <rpaul@xxxxxxxx>:
> Julie wrote
>
> > My husband interprets and uses parentheses to indicate emphasis. I say
> > that parentheses have always indicated, and continue to indicate,
> > subordinate words or phrases. That if, e.g., a newspaper editor has to
> > make a column X number of words and the article is too long by a few,
> > the parenthetical clauses will likely be the first to go.
>
> Your husband seems to have taken punctuation (or is it style?) into his
> own hands. He's also—I would suggest—confusing those to whom he writes,
> and will likely be confused himself if he intends his own use of
> parentheses to emphasize or intensify the word or words between them and
> to read what's written to him in the same way.
>
> Parentheses imply that what they parenthenticate is said by way of an
> aside (hence, 'parenthetical remark'); sometimes parenthetical remarks
> can be sardonic comments; sometimes they can supply information that the
> author suspects the reader might not know, by way of clarification.
>
> Parentheses and dashes (although not hyphens) are cousins, and it's
> often unclear to me which of them to use. I wish that I could create
> italics but I can't (although I can read it them in others' mail).
>
> In any event, I can't see myself writing 'You (idiot)!' 'You, idiot!'
> maybe. Remember when italics were indicated by underlining? Newsrooms
> were much noisier then.
>
> Robert Paul
>
>
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