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I got through most of this but does anyone know why McCarthy famously hated punctuation marks and only, "believed in periods, capitals, and the occasional comma
by kylebenzle 3y ago
I got through most of this but does anyone know why McCarthy famously hated punctuation marks and only, "believed in periods, capitals, and the occasional comma"?
Everyone makes a big deal of it but is it really just preference or is the idea deeper, that like a all the meaning should be contained in the words anyway and punctuation is a shortcut?
- idontwantthis 3y agoHis wildest choice to me is using “could of” etc. I get it’s for pronunciation purposes, but now that it seems on its way to replace the correct spelling, it really jarred me.
- hndc 3y agoWild? Using it in dialogue seems perfectly reasonable. It's a common malapropism.
- cheeseomlit 3y agoEven in dialogue I would've expected "could've". 'Could of' reads more like a typo
- giraffe_lady 3y agoIt's phonetically identical or very near it in most dialects. If anything it's a transcription error, but in this case just a way to imply the spoken cadence of a certain accent. Not any more incorrect than spelling "going to" as "gonna" in dialog.
- actionfromafar 3y agoVery often it's not a malapropism, just a variation on pronounciation.
- giraffe_lady 3y agoIt's not even that, they're pronounced the same in most dialects. It's either a transcription error or an atypical spelling depending on the intent of the author. It doesn't represent a different meaning or pronunciation in speech.