Friday, September 07, 2007

All done

Book manuscript finished, tenure materials handed in. The apartment displays the usual signs of such goings-on: drifts of marked-up pages all over the floor...

I will take this occasion to remark that I am on a mission to reclaim the exclamation point. When I was growing up, I was always taught that exclamation points were to be avoided; I think they were viewed as tacky, overly enthusiasic and just generally inappropriate for either fiction or critical prose. And indeed my favorite quotation mark is the semi-colon, with the hyphen a close second: these are nice stringent tasteful accidentals... But I am increasingly coming to the conclusion that it is time to give up the tyranny of good taste and embrace the exclamation point!

Exclamation point count in the new book: 35 total, 26 in quotations and 9 of my own. I will try not to let too many of 'em get edited out in the stages still to come...

9 comments:

  1. Congratulations!!!!!!!!!!!!

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  2. Congrats! Wow -- that's a lot of work done.

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  3. Congratulations - and all the best for tomorrow's race!

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  4. I am performing a celebratory Snoopy dance in your honor. Video may be posted later.

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  5. Yay you! Now you can relax for a bit!

    Congrats on all your hard work!

    Justine

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  6. Excellent!!

    And I hope today's race unfolded well for you.

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  7. Sorry to be coming by late, but Congratulations! Wonderful to have all of that off your plate so you can pay attention to what's really important!

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  8. Congrats on both handing in all that work and embracing the exclamation mark! What we had drummed into us at school was that an exclamation mark is fine, but ONLY ONE! Perhaps with a few years use you may decide to graduate to multiples!

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