James Joyce: Master of the Well-Placed Colon
In celebration of National Punctuation Day, one of our commenters noted James Joyce's playful use of the colon. Will Berlin writes:
One of my all-time favorite uses of the colon is from Ulysses. The line is, "The felly harshed against the curbstone: stopped." What a beautiful thing to have done, to have transformed the colon into the curbstone and have our mind's eye harsh against it. Punctuation is wonderful.
It's funny how two little dots can stop the flow of your reading dead in its tracks. The way punctuation works on the minds is pretty wonderful.
