inpraiseofhumblecomma

admin管理员组

文章数量:1530915

2024年3月29日发(作者：)

In praise of the humble Comma

逗号之赞 Pico Lyer

The gods, they say, give breath, and they take it away. But the same could be said could it

not?—of the humble comma. Add it to the present clause, and all of a sudden, the mind is, quite

literally, given pause to think, take it out if you wish or forget it and the mind is deprived of a

resting place. Yet still the comma gets no respect. It seems just a slip of a thing, a pedant’s tick, a

blip on the edge of our consciousness, a kind of printer`s smudge almost. Small, we claim, is

beautiful (especially in the age of the microchip).yet what is so often used, and so rarely called, as

the comma---unless it be breath itself?

人们都说，上帝赐予你生命但又将其拿了回去。但是，这话同样放在逗号身上又何尝不是呢？给现在这

句话加上逗号，你会突然停下来想想，如果你想把它去掉又或者忘记，你便会将大脑将会失去一个休息的

空间。可是，逗号不受尊重。似乎它就是一小点、书呆子手中的一个记号、我们意识边缘上的一点、打印

出来的文字中的一个小污点。我们都说小即是美（特别是集成电路时代），但是我们经常用但很少叫的是

逗号。这不就是逗号也拥有生命了么？

Punctuation, one is taught, has a point; to keep up law and order. Punctuation marks are the road

signs placed along the highway of our communication----to control speeds, provide directions and

prevent head—on collisions. A period has the unblinking finality of a red light; the comma is a

flashing yellow light that asks us only to slow down; and the semicolon is a stop sign that tells us to

ease gradually to a halt, before gradually starting up again .By establishing the relations between

words. Punctuation establishes the relations between the people using words. That may be one

reason why school teachers exalt it and lovers defy it (“we love each other and belong to each other

let`s don`t ever hurt each other Nicole let`s don`t ever hurt each other,” wrote gray Gilmore to his

girlfriend). A comma, he must have know,” separates inseparables,” in the clinching words of

, King of English usage.

我们都被教过，标点发有一个目标，那便是维持法律和秩序。标点符号便是放在高速公路上的标志，提

醒我们行驶的速度、提示我们线路的目的地和预防我们在高速公路上行驶的时候发生事故。句号宛如说一

不二的红灯终结者，逗号则是一闪一闪的黄灯提醒我们慢下来，分号好则是停止标记提醒我们停下车来，

然后再缓缓启动。通过建立词与词的关联，标点建立了用词人的关系。也许这就是为什么老师们喜爱它，

而恋人们却不喜欢它的原因（盖瑞·基尔摩尔曾给女友这样写道：“我们彼此相爱天生一对我们永远也不要

伤害彼此 尼克尔 让我们永远不要伤彼此的心”）。他一定知道H.W.佛尔的英语之王使用法：一个逗号会将

不可分离的东西分开。

Punctuation, then, is a civic prop, a pillar that holds society upright. (a run—on sentence, its

phrases piling up without division, is as unsightly as a sink piled high with dirty dishes).small

wonder, then that punctuation was one of the first proprieties of the Vicorian age, the age of the

corset, that the modernists threw off; the sexual revolution might be said to have begun when Joyce`

s Molly Bloom spilled out all her private thoughts in 36 pages of unbridled, almost unperioded and

officially censored prose; and another rebellion was surely marked when gs first felt

free to commit “God” to the lower case.

其次，标点符号是市民的支柱，支撑社会不崩塌。（一句短语堆着短语、没有分隔的粘连句就像高高地

堆着脏碗碟的洗碗槽一样难看。）那么，在维多利亚时代，紧身胸衣的时代，标点符号成为最早的社会礼

节之一也不奇怪，而这些礼节已被现代主义抛弃了。据说性革命始于乔伊斯笔下的莫利·布鲁姆在36页

的散文里泄露出她所有的私密思想，这些散文的内容肆无忌惮，几乎没有句号，遭到有关部门的查删。另

一个著名的反抗来自E·E·卡明斯，他把“God”降为小写，认为这不应受到限制。

Punction thus becomes the signature of cultures. The hot-blooded Spaniard seems to be revealed

in the passion and urgency of his doubled exclamation points and question marks (“caramba! quien

sabe?”),while the impassive Chinese traditionally added to his so—called insrutability by omitting

directions from his ideograms. The anarchy and commotion of the` 60s were given voice in the

exploding exclamation marks, riotous capital letters and Day-Glo italies of Tom Wolfe`s

spray—paint prose;and in communist societies, where the state is almost, the dignity—and

divinity—of capital letters is reserved for ministries. Sub-committees and secretariats.

于是，标点符号成为了不同文化的标志。使用双感叹号和双问号的激动和急切，揭示出西班牙人的热血

性情（“哎呀！！谁知道？？”）。而喜怒不形于色的中国人，则是运用传统的做法增强所谓的深意——删去

其表意文字中标点符号的指示作用。感叹号的滥用、大写字母的横行和汤姆·沃尔夫的荧光喷印散文，这

一切都反映了60年代的混乱和喧闹。在共产主义社会里，几乎所有情况下，尊贵和神圣的大写只属于政

府部门、其下属委员会和书记。

Yet punctuation is something more than a culture`s birthmark; it scores the music in our minds,

gets our thoughts moving to the rhythm of our hearts. Punctuation is the notation in the sheet music

of our words. Telling us when to rest, or when to raise our voices; it acknowledges that the meaning

of our discourse, as of any symphonic composition, lies not only in the units but in the pause, the

pacing and the phrasing. Punctuation is the way one bats one`s eyes, lowers one`s voice or blushes

demurely. Punctuation adjusts the tone and volume till the feeling comes into perfect focus: not

disgust exactly, but distastes: not lust, or like, but love.

Punctuation, in short, gives us the human voice, and all the meanings that lie between the words.

“ you are young, are you ?” loses its innocence when it loses the question mark. Every child knows

the menace of a dropped apostrophe (the parent`s “ don`t do that” shifting into the more slowly

enunciated “do not do that”), and every believer, the ignominy of having his faith reduced to “faith”.

Add an exclamation point to “to be or not to be…”and the gloomy dane has all the resolve he needs;

add a comma, and the noble sobriety of “god save the queen” becomes a cry of desperation

bordering on double sacrilege.

Sometimes, of course, our marking may be simply a matter of aesthetics. popping in a comma

can be like slipping on the necklace that give an outfit quiet elegance, or like catching the sound of

running water that complements as it completes the silence of a Japanese landscape. when V.S

Naipaul, in his latest novel, writes, “he was a middle—aged man, with glasses.” The first comma

can seem a little precious. Yet it gives the description a spin, as well as a subtlety, that it otherwise

lacks, and it shows that the glasses are not part of the middle—agedness, but something else.

当然，有些时候我们的标志可能单单只是美学问题。插入一个逗号就像是在服装上戴上项链让自己看起

来宁静高雅，或是在日本一处优美的景色中捕捉到潺潺的流水声从而衬得风景愈加宁静。V·S·奈波尔最近

的一部小说里写道：“他是一个中年男子，戴着一副眼镜。”第一个逗号看起来似乎有点矫揉造作。但是，

它却给描述带来个转弯，也使得描述变得微妙，否则它就没必要了。逗号表现出眼镜并不只属于中老年人，

而是表达另外的东西。

Thus all these tiny scratches give us breadth and heft and depth. A world that has only periods is a

world without inflections. It is a world without shade, it has a music without sharps and flats. It is a

martial music, it has a jackboot rhythm. Woods cannot bend and curve. A comma, by comparison,

catches the gentle drift of the mind in though, turn it on itself and back on itself, reversing,

redoubling and returning along the course of its own sweet river music; while the semicolon bring

clauses and though together with all the silent discretion of a bostess arranging guest around her

dinner table

从而，所有的这些小点给我们带来广度、分量和深度。只有一个周期的世界是一个没有曲折变化的世界，

是一个没有明暗变化的世界。它的乐曲没有高低音的变化，是一首军乐，是长筒靴的节奏。木头不能弯曲。

相比之下，一个逗号却能捕捉到脑海里的细流，任凭它在悦耳的河流乐曲中时断时续、反转不断、迂回重

叠。然而分号则是把分句和思想融为一体，就如女主人灵活谨慎地把客人安排在餐桌的位置上。

Punctuation then is a matter of care. Care for words, yes, but also, and more important, for what

the words imply. Only a lover notices the small things; the way the afternoon light catches the nape

of a neck, or how a strand of hair slips out from behind an ear, or the way a finger curls around a

cup. And no one scans a letter so closely as a lover, searching for its small print, straining to hear its

nuances, its gasps, its sighs and hesitations, poring over the secret messages that lie in every

cadence. The different between “Jane (whom I adore)” and “Jane, whom I adore.” And the

difference between ecstasy and heartache. “No iron can pierce the heart with such force as a period

put at just the right place,” in Isaac Babel`s lovely words: a comma can let us hear a voice break, or

a heart. Punctuation, in fact, is a labor of love. While brings us back in a way to gods.

标点也是关怀的一个符号。是对词语很在乎，但是，最重要的是对词语的暗示。只有恋人才会注意到

这些小事；午后阳光洒在后颈上，或是一缕头发从耳后滑下，亦或是一只手握着杯子。所有的扫描仪都没

有宛如恋人一般细致入微，寻找那小小的印记，竖起耳朵来倾听它那不一样的变化，它的气息，它的悲叹

以及它的踌躇，细细观察它无处不在的韵律的秘密。例如这两句话的不同：Jane（我喜欢的人）和Jane，

我喜欢的人。它们之间的不同便是前者包含着更多的狂喜，后者则包含着一丝丝的忧伤。“不是没有东西

可以打动我铁一般的心，只是没有在对的地方打动我。”在艾萨克.巴贝尔调皮的言语中说道：一个逗号可

以让我们听到一个声音破碎或是心碎的声音。事实上，标点符号是爱的果实，它重新让我们成了主宰者。

本文标签： 逗号没有标点符号变化便是