내가 배운 뉴욕영어 #33 (Series)

Punctuation Marks

Aug 12. 2021

Punctuation Marks

곧 차차 자세하게 레슨형태로 올려드릴 예정인 punctuation... 영어 및 Western language 에 있어 punctuation marks 는 상당한 비중을 차지합니다. 이를 해결하지 못하면 영어 (특히 writing and reading) 은 망친 것이라 해도 별다르지 않을 것입니다. 얼마나 중요하면 아이들 장난감에도 얘네들이 등장할까요?

2015년에 The New York Times 에 좋은 기사가 나왔습니다. 너무 길어서 읽지 않으실 듯 하여, 한 부분만 올려봅니다. 문자메세지 (text messages) 와 관련된 이야기인데, 문자 사용시에도 참 필요한 punctuation marks 지요? Dashes (대쉬) 와 question marks (물음표) 에 대한 내용인데, 아주 아주 재미있습니다.

I went out with a guy based on his use of dashes once. Within moments of our first interaction — over text message — I was basically in love.

He didn’t just use the lazy singular dash (“-”) as a pause between his thoughts, or even the more time-consuming double-dash (“--”). Nope. This man used a proper em dash.

That is, the kind that required him to hold down the dash button on his iPhone for that extra second, until the “—” appeared, then choose it from among three options. I don’t remember what his messages actually said. But he obviously really liked me.

I’m a writer; it’s natural I’d have a thing for grammar. But these days, it’s as if our punctuation is on steroids.

It’s not just that each of us is more delicately choosing our characters, knowing that an exclamation point or a colon carries more weight in our 140-character world. Or even that our punctuation suddenly feels like hyperbole (right?!?!?!?!?!) because we’ve lost all audible tone.

Those things are true. But it’s also as if a kind of micro-punctuation has emerged: tiny marks in the smallest of spaces that suddenly tell us more about the person on the other end than the words themselves (or, at least, we think they do).

Take the question mark. Recently, a friend I had dinner plans with sent a text to ask “what time” we were meeting. We’d been organizing this meal for weeks; a half-dozen emails back and forth. And yet the question — sans the mark — felt indifferent, almost cold. Couldn’t she at least bother to insert the necessary character?

Of course, had she inserted too many marks, that may have been a problem, too, as there is suddenly a very fine line between appearing overeager (too much punctuation) and dismissive (not enough).

이민 초기시절 중학교에서 처음 접했던 punctuation marks... 이 도구들을 잘 사용만 한다면 서식에 있어 문법에 약한 분들이나 요점정리를 잘 못하는 분들, 또는 톤 (tone) 조절이 잘 안 되는 분들에게는 치명적으로 중요한 도구가 됩니다. 위를 보시고 얘네들의 이름부터 우선 익히시면 좋겠습니다.