11.3.09

in correspondence to the speaker's breath

'Punctuation. Four stops, two marks of movement, and a stroke, or expression of the indefinite or fragmentary –
Comma , Semicolon ; Colon : Period . Mark Interrogation ? Note of Admiration ! Stroke –.

It appears next to self-evident, that the first four or five characters can never be made to represent all the modes and subtle distinctions of connection, accumulation, disjunction, and completion of sense – of it would be quite as absurd as to imagine that the ? and ! should designate all the moods of passion, that we convey by the interrogation or wonder – as the simple question for information – the ironical – the impetuous – the ratiocinative &c – No! this must be left to the understanding of the Reader or Hearer. What then is their use?'

Samuel Taylor Coleridge