“Sometimes a short line seems to me unearned, as if the poet’s trying to make the words weightier by giving you fewer to the pound.” — Ed Parsons
I was thinking about this recently. Is convention affected by media? When paper was scarce and pricier, it made sense to follow a convention of periods and commas and dense packed sentences. As we move to electronic where space is not the same finite resource, the constraint of punctuation as symbol of pause can let up. We can represent silence or pause or pace by a physical spread of shorter lines, gaps within lines without any punctuation because the spaces themselves make the punctuation redundant.
The origin of everyday punctuation marks. For example,
the exclamation point was invented by stacking letters. The mark comes from the Latin word io, meaning “exclamation of joy.” Written vertically, with the i above the o, it forms the exclamation point we use today.
What one is to infer is embedded in the cultural expectation of the text in more than literal literacy but how the words are to be taken. Interrobang and history of punctuation mentioned in May.
No related posts.
I have a short attention span
-like it when one gets right to the point.
once out of school &
the confines of grammar affecting a grade
i found my self
playing with the appearance as much as the words
space
quote
We can represent silence or pause or pace by a physical spread of shorter lines, gaps within lines without any punctuation because the spaces themselves make the punctuation redundant.
end of quote
Actually no — if you write web-pages in HTML you have to specifically add white space — type in extra space and most browsers will contract it to a single space. Reproducing the format of poetry accurately on the web is a nightmare of compromise.
Re: space
It can be a problem if you don’t know html. There is also the use of word art manipulation and image for poetry.
Perhaps more on target to my point was the cost of resource is less now. Whether online or cheap access to copius amount of paper, the cost per inch is not what it was when paper was more scarce.