Eleanor Gould had a rule about these things: a semicolon could not follow a dash. The dash was too fragile to hold it up. Henry James did not follow Gould. For example:
Poor Catherine was conscious of her freshness; it gave her a feeling about the future which rather added to the weight upon her mind. It seemed a proof that she was strong and solid and dense, and would live to a great age—longer than might be generally convenient; and this idea was pressing, for it appeared to saddle her with a pretension the more, just when the cultivation of any pretension was inconsistent with her doing right.
Is not that semicolon after “generally convenient” priceless? Like Emily Dickinson with her dashes, Henry James uses semicolons for timing. They accumulate in a way that can make sentiments feel simultaneous, although it’s impossible to read two things at once. It’s like a trio in opera.
James also proves wrong my objection to semicolons in dialogue. The Doctor, in Washington Square, to Aunt Penniman (his sister):
“You have taken up young Townsend; that’s your own affair. I have nothing to do with your sentiments, your fancies, your affections, your delusions; but what I request of you is that you will keep these things to yourself. I have explained my views to Catherine; she understands them perfectly, and anything that she does further in the way of encouraging Mr. Townsend’s attentions will be in deliberate opposition to my wishes.”
Mrs. Penniman replies, “It seems to me you talk like a great autocrat.”
She means, of course, that what he says is cruel and authoritarian, but the semicolons and the cadences they create help form those pinions of disdain. The carefully calculated punctuation is perfectly in character. If James used more pedestrian punctuation, the Doctor would not sound so tyrannical; he would come across as cavalier.
I wouldn’t change a semicolon of James’s any more than I would meddle with the space around a dash of Emily Dickinson’s. Each little piece of punctuation is calibrated for its effect and pressed into the service of an exquisite sensibility.
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In the hierarchy of punctuation marks, as set forth by Eleanor Gould, a dash can follow a colon or a semicolon, but a colon or a semicolon cannot follow a dash (unless the dash is one of a coordinated pair). The logic is that the stronger mark controls the weaker; the weaker cannot contain the stronger. It sounds like a copy editor’s scheme for world domination, but it makes a certain amount of sense.
A colon is a very controlling gesture. It says, “Right this way,” like a proper butler. A sentence should have only one colon, just as it should have only one period. A butler would never tolerate another butler in the same household. Though a colon can sometimes be replaced by a dash, the colon is more formal. For instance, the following sentence has a pair of coordinate dashes and an eloquent colon before the last clause: “Unable to visit Bruichladdich—unable, anymore, even to enjoy its whisky—Reynier devised a modest plan to save his favorite spirit: he would buy the distillery.” I had never noticed before how much Kelefa Sanneh, writing about Scotch, can sound like Henry James.
A colon is sometimes preferable to a semicolon if the thrust of the sentence is forward: you are amplifying something, providing a definition or a list or an illustration. The semicolon sets up a different relationship; whatever follows relates in a more subtle way to what came before. A dash can perform either of these services, but it is looser, less formal. In Dickens, for instance, I went looking for some of the doubled-up punctuation marks that the Victorians had a penchant for, what Nicholson Baker calls “dashtards”: the commash (,—) and the colash (:—) and the semicolash (;—). In his letters, Dickens also used the stopdash (.—). Seeing them here, enclosed in parentheses, I marvel at their resemblance to emoticons. Instead of building emoticons out of punctuation marks ((((:>)), the Victorians built emotions into their punctuation.
In Dickens I discovered something unexpected: an abundance of double dashes—two-em dashes, closed up. “Gaffer! If you think to get rid of me this way——” He uses the double dash in dialogue, to convey an interruption compounded by a threat. The double dash is strangely expressive, packing an extra dose of suspense, as if the speaker, rendered inarticulate by emotion, were resorting to his fists. And, when you think about it, suspense is what punctuation is all about: how is the author going to finish the sentence?
Chapter 8