marks & gestures

'Punctuation is not a proper object: it is neither speech nor writing; art nor craft; sound nor silence. It may be neither here nor there and yet somehow it is everywhere.'

'Punctuation marks function as shadow figures that both compose and haunt writing's substance.'

'Intonation - what we might call the trace of the sound of punctuation.'

'Therefore I call them [punctuation] not symbols of Logic, but dramatic directions, enabling the reader more easily to place himself in the state of writer or original speaker.'

Punctuation: Art, Politics & Play, Jennifer DeVere Brody, Duke, 2008