In Praise of the Humble Comma小小逗号赞

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2024年3月29日发(作者：)

In Praise of the Humble Comma

小小逗号赞

Pico Lyer

皮科·埃尔

The gods, they say, give breath, and they take it away. But the samesaid-coul

d be said-could itnot?-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 w

ish or forget it and the mind is deprivedof a resting place. Yet still the comma get

s no respea. It seems just a slip of a thing, apedant's tick, a blip on the edge of ou

r consciousness, a kind of printer's smudge , we claim, is beautiful (

especially in the age of the microchip). Yet what is so often used,and so rarely call

ed, as the comma-unless it be breath itself?

人都说神仙把气赐予生灵，又把气夺走。不过这话用在小小的逗号上，何尝不是如此？

给现在这句加上逗号，脑子里真会，突然，停下来想想；若随意去掉，或忘了它，就剥夺

了脑子休息的空间。尽管如此，逗号仍然不受人算重。它似乎只是一个小撇，书呆子手下

的一个小点儿，是我们意识边缘上的一个记号，甚至排字工人沾上的一点污。我们好说以

小为美（尤其在这集成电路时代）。然而，还有什么东西是像逗号那样频频使用而又那样默

默无闻的呢？——不就是气吗？

Punctuation, one is taught, has a point: to keep up law and order. Punctuatio

n marks are theroad signs placed along the highway of our communication——t

o control speeds，

providedirections and prevent head-on collisions. A period has the unblinking fin

ality of a red light,the comma is a flashing yellow light that asks us only to slow d

own, and the semicolon is astop sign that tells us to ease gradually to a halt, befo

re gradually starting up again. Byestablishing the relations between words, punct

uation establishes the relations between thepeople using words. That may be on

e 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'tever hur

t each other,” wrote Gary Gilmore to his girlfriend )A comma ，

he must have known, "separate inseparables" ，

in the clinching words of H. W. Fowler, King of English Usage.

我们都学过，标点有一个目的：维持法律与秩序。标点符号正是我们交通要道上一路

设置的路标——用以控制速度，指示方向，避免迎头相撞。句号具有红灯的一丝不苟，说

一不二；逗号是一闪一闪的黄灯，要求我们只是放慢速度；分号则是停车标记，指示我们

缓缓煞车，然后再缓缓启动标点建立起词与词之间的关系，从而建立起用词人之间的关系。

教师捧它，情人烦它，其原因盖出于此。（盖瑞·基尔摩尔给女友写道：“我爱你你爱我我

是你的你是我的我们永远谁也别伤谁的心科尔我们永远谁也别伤谁的心。”）他一定学过

英语惯用法大王福勒的断言：逗号是“把不可分开的东西分开”。

Punctuation, then, is a civic prop, a pillar that holds society upright.

(A run on sentence, itsphrases piling up without division, is as unsightly as a sink

piled high with dirty dishes.)Smallwonder,then,that punctuation was one of the fi

rst proprieties of the Victorian age, the age ofthe corset, that the modernists thre

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