Thursday 28 October 2010

Punctuation

Over the last few weeks, I have realised that frequently I cannot write out the Bible from memory. This, often, isn't because I can't remember the words but because I am unable to manage the punctuation. I don't for one minute think the punctuation is inspired but I suspect, no, know, that the people who punctuated the Authorised Version, which I use, were far better grammarians than me.
My punctuation is a bit wobbly. There is probably the odd semi-colon on this blog but I doubt that I have managed a colon. In fact, I only know one use for colons; they can go at the start of a list. It is fairly obvious that they are used for other purposes in the AV.
Anyway, having become interested in this subject, out of the blue, there was an article on marking in the AV which includes punctuation, in this edition of the Trinitarian Bible Society Quarterly Record. The Quarterly Record link is found on the left hand side of the home page and the relevant article is Called "Aspects of the Authorised Version, Part 2: Marking the text." It also covers the other interesting but uninspired features of capital letters and italics in the English translation. It is worth a read.

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