Page:The king's English (IA kingsenglish00fowlrich).pdf/234

so clear that mistakes about their use can hardly occur without gross carelessness; and it might be thought that with the four thus left it ought to be a very simple matter to exhaust all possibilities in a brief code of rules. It is not so, however. Apart from temporary disturbing causes–of which two now operative are (1) the gradual disappearance of the colon in its old use with the decay of formal periodic arrangement, and (2) the encroachments of the dash as a saver of trouble and an exponent of emotion—there are also permanent difficulties.

Before mentioning these we observe that the four stops in the strictest acceptation of the word (,) (;) (:) (.)—for (!) and (?) are tones rather than stops—form a series (it might be expressed also by 1, 2, 3, 4), each member of which directs us to pause for so many units of time before procecding. There is essentially nothing but a quantitative time relation between them.

The first difficulty is that this single distinction has to convey to the reader differences of more than one kind, and not commensurable; it has to do both logical and rhetorical work. Its logical work is helping to make clear the grammatical relations between parts of a sentence or paragraph and the whole or other parts: its rhetorical work is contributing to emphasis, heightening effect, and regulating pace. It is in vain that Beadnell lays it down: The variation of pause between the words of the same thought is a matter of rhetoric and feeling, but punctuation depends entirely upon the variation of relations–upon logical and grammatical principles'. The difference between these two:

is in logic nothing; but in rhetoric it is the difference between matter-of-fact statement and indignant statement: a strap, we are to understand from the comma, is a barbarous instrument.

Again, in the two following examples, so far as logic goes, commas would be used in both, or semicolons in both. But