Punctuated Equilibrium*
For a couple of years when I was 12 or 13 I was beholden to the idea that the punctuation marks in a sentence had a kind of numerical value, and that a well-constructed sentence would be one in which the value of the punctuation added up to an integer (in rather the same way that a bar of musical score has to have the right - whole - number of beats in it). If a sentence didn't meet this criterion, it'd be somehow unbalanced or unfinished.

A comma was worth one half of a "beat", for example; a semi-colon was worth one and a half beats. A colon - notwithstanding that I didn't use them much - was worth two. So a sentence could have two commas, or a coma and a semi-colon, because that way its value'd be a whole number. Just one comma in a sentence, though, would have been unacceptable - unless there was a semi-colon as well.

I commited syntactic atrocities just to get enough clauses and subclauses into my sentences in order that they obey the rule.

And then, suddenly, I stopped caring, at roughly the same time that a small number of my classes at school became co-educational. Odd coincindence, that.


*Reposed from about 18 months ago.
( Enzyme is powered by sunlight, Thu 15 Dec 2011, 15:04, 2 replies)

It's amazing what disappears out of ones head
when confronted by attractive ladies. Vital shopping lists have gone in a puff of smoke when wandering around the local supermarket.
(SpangoTheWonderBadger is brewing beer, Thu 15 Dec 2011, 15:11, closed)

I love this.
I rather like the idea of writing a piece of prose according to such rules - a new rhythmical form. Combined with rhyming, this has potential to be quite interesting.

Are these the only values you subscribed? Does a hypen have a beat/time, for example? And what of qualifications such as question marks, exclamation marks etc?

I do have a wife already, luckily.
( Je suis un vagabond is an unfunny, up your own arse middle class knob, Wed 21 Dec 2011, 12:36, closed)