Comma , sharp intake, thought hanging. Full stop. Boot on creaky boards, settling - Dash cuts in quick - stretches till the room feels small.
Your pulse jumps. Skin prickles. A dead voice whispers again. Bread warms the air. Grass cuts sharp.
That's punctuation my dear friends. Not rules. The hidden heartbeat. The rhythm you feel when everything's quiet. Punctuation can change everything...
Think of the opening of Ken Follett's novel " The Pillars of the Earth. "
THE SMALL BOYS came early to the hanging. It was still dark when the first three or four of them sidled out of the hovels, quiet as cats in their felt boots. A thin layer of fresh snow covered the little town like a new coat of paint, and theirs were the first footprints to blemish its perfect surface. They picked their way through the huddled wooden huts and along the streets of frozen mud to the silent marketplace, where the gallows stood waiting. The boys despised everything their elders valued. They scorned beauty and mocked goodness. They would hoot with laughter at the sight of a cripple, and if they saw a wounded animal they would stone it to death. They boasted of injuries and wore their scars with pride, and they reserved their special admiration for mutilation: a boy with a finger missing could be their king. They loved violence; they would run miles to see bloodshed; and they never missed a hanging.
Who would not be drawn in? It breathes. It speaks. It begs me to read. A tale about something from over a thousand years ago beckoned me... and I read. Many times. And that punctuation was golden.
Redhead, at ninety-three, once told me: when she reads a good book, it flows. The sentences have rhythm; they carry breath and pulse. A comma is not a mark, but a breath drawn; a period or fullstop as we call it, is not an end, but a moment of stillness. A semicolon, a dash, an ellipsis - each directs the tempo of thought, the rise and fall of attention. In the right hands, words make her heart race, then slow; they conjure the smell of bread baking, or the sharp, sweet scent of grass freshly mown. Without this rhythm, words are empty. Lifeless.
I was chatting with Redhead this morning about swearing, punctuation, books, and all things of similar ilk. We both agreed: swearing has become a lazy way of communicating. Much like precision in punctuation, our precision in words has changed.
Many years ago, I worked as a guard in a male maximum-security prison - yes, who would have thought it? But needs must, and it paid the bills. I quickly learned that, at five foot three and slim in stature, I needed words to keep me out of danger.
I once spoke with a young Aboriginal lad, eighteen years old, whose preferred pronouns seemed to be “fuck,” “fuck you,” and “fuck everyone.” I suggested that it might help if he started expanding his vocabulary. I explained that learning new ways to express himself could help next time he faced a magistrate. Instead of “The magistrate is a fucking fucker,” he could have other tools to communicate effectively.
Over the following weeks, he tried. I noticed greetings like, “Good morning, Miss. It is a sunny day today,” or, “It was very loud thunder last night.” There were also noticeably a lot more black eyes on the compound and a marked reduction in swearing near me.
When his hearing came up, he was approved for transfer to a lower-security facility. As he packed his belongings in a sheet used as a swag over his shoulder, he turned to me and said:
“It was all down to you, Miss. Thanks. You changed my life. And I don’t even fucking swear anymore.”
