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Friday, October 8, 2010

Why Do I Have to Learn Punctuation?

After all, look at these rule-breakers in William Faulkner's Absalom, Absalom!:
Tell about the South. What's it like there. What do they do there. Why do they live there. Why do they live at all

and, later on, the protagonist's response:
"You cant understand it. You would have to be born there."

If Faulkner can break the rules, why can't I? Answer: He won the Nobel Prize for Literature; you didn't. (Just kidding.) Real answer: He knew the rules in order to know when to break them.
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