Punctuation matters more than you think
标点，比你想的更重要
一篇书评把句号、逗号和破折号写成影响阅读的角色。本文既追溯标点如何帮助断句，也展示书评作者怎样用标点相关的双关表达赞赏和保留。精读时要同时读句子的结构与文字游戏。
原文来源：The Economist
学习目标
- 解释标点如何影响句意和朗读
- 拆解隐含条件、分词结果与插入语
- 辨认dashing、pointed与a dash flat的双关
- 用让步结构写出有依据的书评判断
中英对照阅读
“IN THE BEGINNING was the word, and the word was with God, and the word was God.” Yet in the beginning there was no punctuation. In early Latin manuscripts, the Bible was written in scriptura continua, without spaces or marks between words. This was a problem: pause at the wrong point, and you could sever God from “the word”, throwing Christ’s divinity into doubt. So in the Middle Ages, Christian scholars set about punctuating the holy book, using symbols and sub-clauses as “lanterns to words” to guide preachers.
“太初有道，道与神同在，道就是神。” 然而，最初并没有标点。 早期拉丁文手稿中的《圣经》采用连续书写，单词之间既无空格，也无符号。 这带来了问题：若在错误的位置停顿，就可能把神与“道”分开，从而使基督的神性受到质疑。 因此，中世纪的基督教学者开始给这部经典加上标点，用符号和分句充当“照亮词语的灯”，引导传道者朗读。
“The history of punctuation is the history of humanity,” argues Florence Hazrat, a researcher, in a rollicking new book. Often dismissed as “the invisible ushers of the sentence”, dots and dashes have shaped religious texts, legal documents, and literature. “On the Mark”, like punctuation itself, makes readers pause for thought, showing how full stops have displeased and commas caused controversy.
研究者Florence Hazrat在一本活泼有趣的新书中提出：“标点的历史就是人类的历史。” 句点和破折号常被视为“句子里隐形的引座员”而不受重视，却塑造了宗教文本、法律文书和文学作品。 《On the Mark》像标点本身一样，让读者停下来思考，展示句号如何惹人不快、逗号又如何引发争论。
This pointed history starts in the ancient world. Cicero, like other Roman scholars, thought punctuation was amateurish. For skilled orators, half the fun was in interpreting obscure writing. Ms Hazrat races across time—offering digressions about how, for instance, Irish monks in the eighth century first put spaces between words—before reaching the “punctuation boom” of the Renaissance. Scholars in Italy invented curved commas, semicolons and (do not forget) parentheses. The printing press helped spread and standardise these signs, and by around 1600 all the major marks were in place.
这段颇有锋芒的历史从古代开始。 西塞罗和其他罗马学者一样，认为使用标点显得不够专业。 对熟练的演说家来说，一半的乐趣就在于解读晦涩的文字。 Hazrat女士飞快地穿越历史，穿插一些题外话，例如8世纪爱尔兰修士如何首次在单词之间加入空格，然后讲到文艺复兴时期的“标点繁荣”。 意大利学者创造了弯曲的逗号、分号，以及——别忘了——括号。 印刷机帮助传播这些符号，并使其趋于统一；到1600年前后，所有主要标点都已基本到位。
“On the Mark” is crammed with fascinating facts. Take the exclamation mark, about which Ms Hazrat wrote a previous book. Invented by an Italian poet in the 1360s to signal “admiration and wonder”, by the 19th century it had become a sign of emotion and even hysteria. Editors added them to old texts, including Shakespeare’s “Antony and Cleopatra”. (In the First Folio, the play had only 16 exclamation marks, but modern versions contain about 200, most of them clustered in Cleopatra’s shouty-sounding speeches.) In the 20th century the exclamation mark fell into “soundless cymbal-crashing”, as Theodor Adorno, a German philosopher, put it. Nazi propagandists aggressively attached clusters of them to the end of assertions!!!
《On the Mark》装满了引人入胜的知识。 就拿感叹号来说，Hazrat女士此前已写过一本关于它的书。 它由一位意大利诗人在14世纪60年代创造，用以表示“赞叹与惊奇”；到了19世纪，它已成为情绪乃至歇斯底里的标志。 编辑们把感叹号加进旧文本，其中包括莎士比亚的《安东尼与克莉奥佩特拉》。 在《第一对开本》中，这部剧只有16个感叹号，现代版本却大约有200个，其中大多数集中在克莉奥佩特拉那些听起来像喊叫的台词中。 到了20世纪，感叹号变成了德国哲学家狄奥多·阿多诺所说的“无声的铙钹碰撞”。 纳粹宣传者在断言末尾气势汹汹地堆上成串的感叹号！！！
Writers have long squabbled over scribbles. Emily Dickinson felt “defeated” when an editor cut a dash; Charles Baudelaire told his proofreader “I absolutely want to keep this comma.” Mark Twain even threatened to have a proofreader shot who dared change his punctuation. This is a delightful tale of marks’ evolution, even if Ms Hazrat’s own attempts to use them inventively fall a dash flat.
作家们长期以来一直为这些笔画争吵。 编辑删掉一个破折号，会让艾米莉·狄金森感到“挫败”；夏尔·波德莱尔则对校对员说：“我绝对要保留这个逗号。” 马克·吐温甚至曾威胁，要把胆敢改动他标点的校对员枪毙。 这是一个令人愉快的标点演变故事，尽管Hazrat女士自己那些力求新颖的标点用法，效果稍稍平淡了一点。