The Curious Power of Punctuation (www.newyorker.com)
26 points by pepys a day ago | 4 comments

• chasil 12 minutes ago

The play and motion picture Wit by Margaret Edson fixates on a poem by John Donne, Death be not Proud.

The fixation is on the last line of the poem:

And death shall be no more; death, thou shalt die.

The assertion is that Donne did not intend the use of a semicolon, and converting it to a comma significantly alters the meaning, profoundly uplifting the aura of spirituality.

The play:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wit_(play)

The poem:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Death_Be_Not_Proud

Discussion:

https://lavelleporter.com/2015/02/13/readingwit/

• wpollock 2 hours ago

Dang says tomhow is the better moderator.

Dang, says tomhow, is the better moderator.

• piskov 3 hours ago

> what about, say, the war in Gaza?

That was not on my top-5 list of things that may be in that article.

• noworld 4 hours ago

Let’s eat, Grandma.