Punctuation - by A.M. Hickman - Hickman's Hinterlands

Time seems to obey the grammatical conventions of the written page: A colon invites the mind to consider a pointed notion — a dash leads the reader to ponder, and a comma signals that one can finally take a breath. Often, the comma’s space for rest comes mercifully in a long sentence. Perhaps there are harried pages that stretch so long and unruly that the reader can only be given rest with a paragraph break, a divider line, or a blank page signalling a new chapter. And just as a funeral or a baptism builds a clarifying gateway in biographical time, and as the hiker’s mountainside shanty or lean-to allows for rest, so too with the moments that punctuate life’s stanzas. As we go, we must mark time; we must pause and reflect before diving into the next page or chapter — sometimes, we must even pause so thoroughly that we could only be transitioning into “Book Two,” “Volume Six,” or some distant edition the likes of which we never imagined writing. And indeed, there are many “chapters” of

Time seems to obey the grammatical conventions of the written page: A colon invites the mind to consider a pointed notion — a dash leads the reader to ponder, and a comma signals that one can finally take a breath. Often, the comma’s space for rest comes mercifully in a long sentence. Perhaps there are harried pages that stretch so long and unruly that the reader can only be given rest with a paragraph break, a divider line, or a blank page signalling a new chapter. And just as a funeral or a baptism builds a clarifying gateway in biographical time, and as the hiker’s mountainside shanty or le