Day 197: That Damn Mark

2026-08-22Hello!I've completed another book. It's been a long while since I last did some extensive reading on paper — in fact, I've only finished four other books this year. This one, which I completed in August, is Semicolon by Cecelia Watson, a book studying the English language mark.This is a book recommendation not meant for most people, but those who want to seek out a nuanced interpretation of language. The old textbooks sold to children in the US were created by businessmen making up rules on the spot (often contradicting each other), criticizing even the grammar of Shakespeare's works. Yet when it came to punctuation, those same arrogant textbooks cowered away from making clean, scientific rules. Still, the semicolon (;) has been fundamental in cases of law, poetry, and computer programming. Also, this emoticon: ;).I'm also going to use this book recommendation to ramble about emoticons — those text-based faces that can come in Western style (side-on) or Japanese kaomoji…