gertrude stein
on punctuation
there are some punctuations that are interesting
and there are some punctuations that are not.
let us begin with the punctuations that are not.
of these the one but the first and the most the completely most uninteresting is the question mark.
the question mark is alright when it is all alone
when it is used as a brand on cattle
or when it could be used in decoration
but connected with writing it is completely entirely completely uninteresting. it is evident that if you ask a question you ask a question but anybody who can read at all knows when a question is a question as it is written in writing. therefore i ask you therefore wherefore should one use the question mark.beside it does not in its form go with ordinary printing and so it pleases neither the eye nor the ear and it is therefore like a noun
just an unnecessary name of something.
a question is a question, anybody can know that.
a question is a question and so why add to it the question mark when it is already there when the question is already there in the writing.therefore I never could bring myself to use a question mark, i always found it positively revolting, and now very few do use it. exclamation marks have the same difficulty and also quotation marks, they are unnecessary,they are ugly, they spoil the line of the writing or the printing and anyway what is the use, if you do not know that a question is a question what is the use of its being a question.
the same thing is true of a quotation.
when i first began writing I found it simply impossible to use question marks and quotation marks and exclamation points and now anybody sees it that way. perhaps some day they will see it some other way but not at any rate anybody can and does see it that way. so there are the uninteresting things in punctuation uninteresting in a way that is perfectly obvious, and so we do not have to go any farther into that.
one other little punctuation mark one can have feelings about and that is the apostrophe for possession.
well feel as you like about that, i can see and i do see that for many that for some the possessive case apostrophe has a gentle tender insinuation that makes it very difficult to definitely decide to do without it. one does do without it, i do, i mostly always do, but i cannot deny that from time to time i feel myself having regrets and from time to time i put it in to make the possessive case. absolutely do not like it and leaving it out i feel no regret
perhaps it does appeal by its weakness to your weakness.
at least at any rate from time to time i do find myself letting it alone if it has come in and sometimes it has come in.
i cannot positively deny but that I do from time to time let it come in.
so now to come to the real question of punctuation
periods, commas
colons, semi-colons
and capitals
and small letters.
I have had a long and complicated life with all these.Let us begin with these I use the least first and these are colons and semi-colons, one might add to these commas.When I first began writing, I felt that writing should go on, I still do feel that it should go on but when I first began writing I was completely possessed by the necessity that writing should go on and on and if writing should go on what had colons and commas to do with it
what had periods to do with it what had small letters and capitals to do with it to do with writing going on which was at that time the most profound need I had in connection with writing. What had colons and semi-colons to do with it what had commas to do with it what had periods to do with it.What had periods to do with it. Inevitably no matter how completely I had to have writing go on, physically one had to again and again stop sometime
sometime and if one had to again and again stop some time then periods had to exist. Beside I had always like the look of periods and I liked what they did. Stopping sometime did not really keep one from going on, it was nothing that interfered, it was only something that happened, and as it happened as a perfectly natural happening, I did not believe in periods and I used them. I really never stopped using them.Beside that periods might later come to have a life of their own to commence breaking up things in arbitrary ways
by the time i had written this poem about three years ago periods had come to have for me completely a life of their own.
they could begin to act as they thought best and one might interrupt one’s writing with them that is not really interrupt one’s writing with them but one could come to stop arbitrarily stop at times in one’s writing and so they could be used and you could use them Periods could come to exist in this way and they could come in this way to have a life of their own. They did not serve you in any servile way as commas and colons and semi-colons do.
yes you do feel what I mean.
periods have a life of their own a necessity of their own
a feeling of their own a time of their own.