Bert McCoy's
"MyTeaching Resources"
English 9-12
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    • Film Studies 2019-2020 >
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        • Film Study Narrative Design
        • The Hero's Journey >
          • What is an Archetype?
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        • Mise En Scene >
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        • The Legend of Bagger Vance/The Gita >
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        • Meet Joe Black >
          • Death Takes A Holiday 1934
        • Alfred Hitchcock >
          • Alfred Hitchcock
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          • Dial M for Murder
          • Psycho >
            • Psycho 1960
            • Ed Gain Psycho
          • The Birds
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            • Disturbia
          • Vertigo >
            • Vertigo 1958
          • Rope
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          • Notorious 1946
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          • North by Northwest 1959
          • To Catch a Thief/ Hitchcock
          • The 39 Steps 1935
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        • Marathon Man
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        • 42 The Jackie Robinson Story
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          • it's a Wonderful Life
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        • I Am Legend
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          • H.G. Wells
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        • Forever Strong Rugby >
          • Forever Strong
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        • Goal The Dream Begins
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          • The Good, The Bad, and the Ugly
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          • 12 Angry Men 1957
          • Casablanca >
            • Casablanca
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          • Strangers on a Train/ Hitchcock >
            • Strangers on a Train/ Hitchcock
          • The Maltese Falcon
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          • Charlie Chaplin
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        • Blade Runner 2049 >
          • Blade Runner
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          • Top 25 Cult Films:
          • Screenwriting software
        • Films To Consider: >
          • Breathless, by Jean-Luc Godard (1960)
          • Interstellar
          • What Dreams May Come
          • Powder
          • Forrest Gump
          • Mr. Holland's Opus >
            • Vimeo Short Films
            • Sketchbooks for Class
          • The Shining
          • Breakfast at Tiffiffany's
          • Indiana Jones
          • Rain Man
          • French Kiss
          • Silence of the Lambs
          • The Hunger Games/Quotes >
            • Suzanne Collins
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            • The Hunger Games
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            • Catching Fire
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            • The Hunger Games/ Characters, Facts, Themes,
          • The Last Samurai
          • In the Mood for Love
          • Seabiscuit
          • Malcolm X
          • 3 Days of the Condor 1975
          • Das Boot
          • Crimson Tide
          • U-571
          • The Hunt For Red October
          • Mr. & Mrs. Smith
          • Promised Land
          • Wonder Woman 2017
          • Planet of the Apes Films
          • The Secret Life of Walter Mitty
          • A Fist Full of Dollars
          • The Conformist >
            • The Conformist
          • Peter Sellers
          • Gladiator
          • The Last Emperor 1987/ Bertolucci
          • Phenomenon 1996
          • Back to the Future
          • The Butler
          • Contagion 2011
          • Speed Racer
          • The Rainmaker
          • Remember the Titans
          • In the Mood for Love
          • 1984 George Orwell
          • Lord of the Rings Films
        • Citizen Kane >
          • Citizen Kane #2
        • The Perks of Being a Wallflower
        • They're Here!
        • The Wild Wild West! >
          • John Wayne / True Grit
          • Clint Eastwood/ High Plains Drifter
        • The Pride of the Yankees 1943
      • German Expressionism in Film >
        • Fritz Lang
        • Dadaist Films
      • Film as Social and Cultural History
      • Filmmaker IQ
      • National Archive Films
      • Atlas Shrugged /Ayn Rand
      • 2016-17 Film Play List
      • Scary Movies >
        • Horror
        • Flowers in the Attic/ Parental Responsibilities
        • Ghost of the Lagoon by Armstrong Sperry
        • Frankenstein 1910 Silent Movie
        • Free Movies
        • My Favorite Directors...Best Directors >
          • My Favorite Actors
      • Dreamworks
      • How to find the theme (s)
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      • Film Lighting Terms and Techniques >
        • Film Lighting
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      • Film Studies/ Film as Literature (FAL) >
        • filmsite.org
        • Classics Movies #1 >
          • Classic Movies #2
        • Buster Keaton
        • Buster keaton vs Charlie Chaplin
        • Sidney Portier Movies
      • Film Techniques and Terminology
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      • Stages and Archetypes of the Hero's Journey
      • October Sky
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      • Stephen Fry
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      • From Weak to Strong Movies
      • The Secret Life of Bees
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      • Sports Movies >
        • A River That Runs Through It >
          • Fly Fishing Quotes
        • Money Ball >
          • Money Ball #2
        • Dogville
        • Goal / History of soccer >
          • Goal (page two)
        • Teamwork Movies
        • www.ronaldothefilm.com
        • We Are Marshall
        • Pele
        • Chariots of Fire
        • Remember the Titans
      • Lance Armstrong Doping
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      • Madame Bovary
  • Bert McCoy Quotes 1
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    • Bert McCoy Non-duality Quotes
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  • English 9 Curriculum Map 2018-19
    • Siddhartha >
      • Siddhartha Vocabulary Words
    • English 9 Unit 1 >
      • Video Games >
        • Video Gaming
        • Video Games #2
        • Game Programmer
        • Video Game Jobs
        • Video Games/Presi/Slideshare
      • Video Games
      • Story Telling /Moth
      • 10 Rules/Carmichael
    • The Cast of Amontillado
    • The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian >
      • The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian Vocabulary Words
    • Direct and Indirect Characterization
    • Overly Sarcastic Productions The Classics
    • English 9 Unit 2 >
      • Food >
        • BBC Fast Food Baby
        • BBC The Truth About Food
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        • GMOs
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        • Food
        • Food
      • Richard Wright/Blackboy >
        • Black Boy by Richard Wright
      • The Age of the Essay Paul Graham
    • English 9 Unit 3 >
      • Siddhartha >
        • Siddhartha
        • The Odyssey Vocabulary Words >
          • The Odyssey Movie
          • Create a Myth Assignment
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          • Freewill vs Determinism quotes
          • Freewill vs Determinism
          • Greek Gods
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          • Odyssey
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          • The Odyssey Presentations
      • Greek and Roman >
        • Untitled
        • What is theater?
        • Ancient Rome
        • The Gladiator Graveyard
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        • Rome/History/BBC >
          • Marcus Aurelius
          • The Stoics
          • Metal Detecting Roman/Greek
        • Oedipus The King >
          • Oedipus the King/Prezi
        • Homer, The Iliad
        • The Norse Gods
    • English 9 Unit 4 >
      • Graffiti >
        • Bansky
        • Bansky Art Sold fo
        • Street Art
        • The Top Street and Graffiti Artists to Watch in 2015
        • Graffiti Analysis
        • Anamorphic Graffiti Illusions by Odeith – Fubiz
    • Romeo and Juliet
    • English 9 Unit 5/ Poetry >
      • Various Poets
    • English 9 Other >
      • English 9 Essay
  • English 12 2017-18
    • Restorative Justice >
      • Juvenile Justice Essay Resources
      • Adam Foss
      • Racial Profiling >
        • Racial Poetry
        • Racial Profiling
      • Racism
      • Bullying #1
      • Race/Racism/Bullying
      • Jim Crow Museum
      • What Would You Do?
      • Bullying
      • Bullying
    • Eng 12/ Life after high school >
      • Personal Statement
      • Vision Board Assignment >
        • Vision Board Project
      • UC Writing Prompts/Journals
      • Hidden Intellectualism by Gerald Graff
      • Job Applications/Business Letter
      • Interview Questions and Answers >
        • Interview Q & A
        • Interview Q & A
      • Job Seeking/Resume/Q and A
      • FAFSA
      • Siddhartha by Hermann Hesse
    • Unit 2 Week (3-5) "College Application Essay" >
      • Commencement Speeches #1
      • Commencement Speeches #2
      • Great Speeches
    • Zoot Suit >
      • Zoot Suit 2
    • 1984 Language, Gendetr, and Culture in George Orwell's 1984 >
      • 1984 Key facts, characters, themes, motifs, and symbolism
    • Brave New World 2016 >
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      • Gender, Language, and Identity
      • Brave New World Character Name meanings
      • BNW Vocabulary
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      • Brave New World Vocabulary Words
      • Brave New World 2016 2
      • The Perennial Philosophy/Huxly
      • Mystic Quotes
      • Papaji Advaita Vedanta
      • Nissargadatta
      • Vedanta Advaita Quotes
      • Kristnamurti Quotes
      • Sola BNW
      • Iron Maiden/ BNW
    • Into The Wild 2016-17
    • Into the Wild/ 11/15 >
      • Into the Wild/ Characters >
        • Into The Wild/Characters >
          • Into the Wild/Themes, Characters
      • Into the Wild/ Vocab
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      • Into The Wild/ Glossary
      • Into the Wild/ Quiz 1
      • Into the Wild/Jon Krakauer >
        • Is Ignorance Bliss?
        • Into the Wild/ Essential questions
        • Into the Wild/20/20 >
          • Into the Wild/Eckhart Tolle
        • Chris McCandless Articles/Outside Magazine
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        • Into the Wild
        • Into the Wild/The Big Two-hearted River/Nick Adams
        • Into the Wild/Who Am I
        • Into the Wild/Pierre Bezuhov/From War and Peace
        • Into The Wild/Various
        • Into the Wild/2015/Rush
        • Into the Wild/Tolstoy
        • Into the Wild/Springsteen
        • Into the Wild/Jack London
        • Into the Wild/Emerson
        • To Build a Fire/Jack Londen
        • Into the Wild/Louis L' Amour
        • Into the Wild/Thoreau
        • Into the Wild/Boris Pasternak
        • Into the Outdoors
        • Into the Wild/Alaska Denali
        • Into the Wild/Snowboarding
        • Into the Wild/2014/15/Supertramp
        • Into the Wild/Vocabulary
        • Into The Wild/Themes >
          • Into the Wild/Themes
        • Into The Wild/Glossary
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        • Into the Wild
        • Into the Wild (Prezi)
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        • Into the Wild /Movie Questions
        • Into the Wild/ Q&A
        • Into the Wild/ Climbing Videos
        • Into the Wild/Moose
    • Standards
    • English 12 Syllabus
    • English 12 2016-17 >
      • English 12a Final Essay
      • Letter To Myself >
        • Letter to Myself
        • Letter to Myself
    • English 12 Essay 2015
    • History of the English Church >
      • History of English
      • History of English
      • The History of English >
        • BBC Anglo-Saxons >
          • Anglo Saxons >
            • Anglo Saxon Lyre
            • Anglo-Saxon The History of English
            • Worst Jobs in History (Middle Ages)
            • The Worst Jobs in History--The Dark Age - Part 1-6
            • The Worst Jobs In History - 1x03 - Tudor
            • The Worst Jobs In History--Roman & Anglo-Saxon
            • The Worst Jobs In History--Medieval
            • The Worst Jobs In History--Tudor
            • The Worst Jobs In History--Stuart
            • The Worst Jobs In History--Georgian
            • The Worst Jobs In History--Victorian
            • The Worst Jobs In History--Urban
            • The Worst Jobs In History--Royal
            • The Worst Jobs In History-- Industrial
            • The Worst Jobs In History--Maritime
            • The Worst Jobs In History--Rural
            • The Worst Jobs In History--Christmas
            • The Medievil Mind >
              • The Medieval Belief
              • The Medievil Treasures BBC
              • The Medieval Power
              • Age of Conquest
              • The Crusades
              • The Black Plague
              • AEngla Land
              • Treasures of the Anglo-Saxons
              • The Staffordshire Hoard
            • Beowulf >
              • In Search of Beowulf
              • Beowulf PPt Presentations
              • British Literature Learning Videos >
                • Paganism vs Christianity
                • The Germanic Tribes
                • Beowulf & the Anglo-Saxons (1-8)
            • The Canterbury Tales
        • Language
    • English 12 Reading >
      • Epic of Gilgamesh Audio 2000 BC.
      • Sir Gawain and the Green Knight Late 14th-century
      • The Wife of Bath's Tale 1405-1410 from canterbury Tales
      • The Passionate Shepard
      • Shakespeare 1564-1616 >
        • Shakespeare/ Tudor England
        • Novels/Plays >
          • Hamlet's, "To Be or Not to Be"
          • A Midsummer Night's Dream
          • Macbeth
          • Macbeth
          • Macbeth Act by Act
          • Shakespeare Poems
          • Globe Theater
          • Shakespeare Sonnets
          • Sonnet 1
          • Sonnet 1 Blog:
          • Sonnet 18
          • Sonnet 29
          • Sonnet 29 Blog:
          • Sonnet 75
          • Sonnet 75 Blog
          • Sonnet 130
      • Romeo & Juliet/ Shakespeare 4/15 >
        • Romeo & Juliet/ Shmoop Resources
        • Shakespeare Glossary
        • Shakespeare's Globe
        • Quotes about Shakespeare >
          • Shakespeare Quotes
          • Shakespeare Castles
        • Romeo & Juliet/ Characters
        • Romeo & Juliet/ Themes, Motifs, Symbolism
        • Elizabethan Clothing
        • Royal Shakespeare Company
        • Romeo and Juliet 1
        • Romeo and Juliet 2
        • Romeo and Juliet 3
        • Romeo and Juliet/ 60 Second
    • Six Centuries of Verse: Metaphysical & Devotional Poets >
      • Ben Johnson
      • John Donne
      • Andrew Marvell >
        • Jonathan Swift
        • A Modest Proposal
      • To His Coy Mistress
    • Romanticism 1790-1850 >
      • Romantic Spirit
      • Mysticism
      • William Blake
      • William Wordsworth
      • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
      • John Keats
      • Percy Bysshe Shelley
      • Mary Shelley
      • Lord Byron
      • James Joyce
  • My Favorite People
    • Favorite Artists >
      • Brian Dettmer Book Cutting
      • Bansky
      • Julian Schnabel
      • Phillip Guston
      • David Salle
      • Robert Motherwell
      • Picaso
      • Raushenburg
      • Francisco Clemente
      • Joseph Beuys
      • Cy Twombly
      • Jean Michel Basquiat
      • Keith Haring
      • Kenny Scharf
      • Kaws
      • Sun Xun
      • L' Arte
      • Richard Serra
    • AESOP
    • Adyashanti
    • Maya Angelou
    • Jane Austin
    • James Baldwin
    • Bansky Quotes
    • Coleman Barks
    • Joseph Beuys
    • Harold Bloom >
      • Harol Bloom/ How to read and why
    • Jorge Luis Borges
    • Robert Bly 1 >
      • Robert Bly 2
    • David Bowie
    • Ray Bradberry >
      • There Will Come Soft Rains
      • Usher II
      • The Veldt
      • Marionettes Inc.
      • Fehrenheit 451
      • Fahrenheit 451 Vocabulary
      • Fahrenheit 451 Quotes
    • Russell Brand >
      • Russell Brand
    • David Brooks
    • Barbara Brodsky
    • James Brown
    • Buddha >
      • Buddha
    • Warren Buffet
    • James Cameron
    • Albert Camus
    • Jack Canfield
    • George Carlin
    • Lewis Carrol
    • Caroline Casey
    • Paulo Coelho/Alchemist >
      • The Alchemist by
      • Paulo Coelho
    • John Coltrane >
      • John Coltrane
    • Steven Covey >
      • Steven Covey
      • The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People/Steven Covey
    • Charlie Chaplin
    • Noam Chomsky
    • Deepak Chopra >
      • Ask Deepak
      • Deepak Chopra
    • Winston Churchill
    • Mihaly Csikszentmihaly
    • Ram Dass
    • Simone De Beauvoir
    • Anthony De Mello
    • Daniel Dennett
    • Shanti Devi
    • Junot Diaz
    • WALT DISNEY QUOTES
    • Fyodor Dostoyevsky >
      • Fyodor Dostoyevsky/ The Brothers Karamazov
    • Carol Dweck/Mindsets
    • Bob Dylan >
      • Bob Dylan
    • Thomas Edison Quiz
    • Albert Einstein >
      • Albert Einstein
    • T. S. Eliot
    • Ralph Waldo Emerson
    • Jane Eyre
    • Anneliese Marie Frank
    • William Faulkner
    • F Scott Fitsgerald >
      • The Roaring 20's
      • F Scott Fitzgerald 2014-15
      • The Great Gatsby
    • Benjamin Franklin
    • Robert Frost
    • Stephen Fry >
      • Stephen Fry
    • Neil Gaiman
    • Dan Gilbert
    • Malcom Gladwell
    • Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
    • Gurdjieff
    • Steven Hawking /black Holes
    • Hafez/Hafiz #1 >
      • Hafez/Hafiz Poems #2
      • Hafez/Hafiz #3
      • Hafez/Hafiz #4
      • Hafez #5 >
        • Hafiz Poems #7
      • Hafez Poems #6
      • Hafez Poems #8
    • Thich Nhat Hanh
    • Tyrone Hayes
    • Ernest Hemingway
    • Hermann Hesse >
      • Siddhartha Quotes
    • Christopher Hitchens
    • HOU HSIAO-HSIEN
    • Langston Hughes >
      • Langston Hughes/ Poems
      • Langston Hughes
    • Aldous Huxley >
      • Brave New World 4/15 >
        • Secret Societies >
          • The Knights Templar
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          • The Rosicrucians
          • The Illuminati
          • The Carbonari
        • BNW/ Chemtrails vs Contrails
        • BNW/ Unit Plan
        • BNW/ 2015
        • BNW/ TED
        • BNW/ William Blake/Doors of Perception
        • BNW/ Details #1
        • BNW/ Details #2
        • BNW/ Soma= DMT?
        • BNW/ Futuristic Movie Trailers
        • BNW/ Dystopia vs Utopia
        • BNW vs 1984
        • BNW/ Orwell vs Huxley
        • BNW/ Noam Chomsky
        • BNW/ Huxley Complete Works
        • BNW/ Vedanta and Huxley
        • BNW/ Advaita Vedanta
        • BNW/ Bohemian Grove
        • BNW/ Corporate Deceit
        • BNW/ Shakespeare and Religion by Huxley
        • BNW/ Geo-Engineering
        • BNW/ About Aldous Huxley
        • BNW/ Doors
        • BNW/ Conspiracy?
        • BNW/1984 Synthetic Telepathy
        • BNW/ May 13th
        • BNW/ Transhumanism
        • BNW/ What is DMT? Soma?
        • BNW/ Psychological Warfare
        • BNW/ NWO
      • Brave New World 2014 >
        • Brave New World 2014 >
          • Brave New World #5 2014
          • Oligarcy
          • Transhumanism
          • Agenda 21
          • Inequality For All
          • Inequality For All
          • Brainwash Update
          • Globalization
        • Brave New World Quotes
        • Brave New World >
          • Brave New World #2
          • Brave New World #3
          • Brave New World #4
          • enotes/Brave New World
          • Brave New World Vocabulary Words
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German critical theorist Theodor Adorno is known for many things, but a light touch isn’t one of them. His work includes despairing post-fascist ethics and a study on the sociology and psychology of fascism. Those who dig deeper into his catalog may know his rigorously philosophical Negative Dialectics or dense, opaque Aesthetic Theory. Given the seriously heavy nature of these books, you might be surprised, as I was, to read the paragraph below:

An exclamation point looks like an index finger raised in warning; a question mark looks like a flashing light or the blink of an eye. A colon, says Karl Kraus, opens its mouth wide: woe to the writer who does not fill it with something nourishing. Visually, the semicolon looks like a drooping moustache; I am even more aware of its gamey taste. With self-satisfied peasant cunning, German quotation marks (<<> >) lick their lips.

The skillful deployment of aphorism seems typical; the playfulness not so much. But Adorno’s short essay, “punctuation marks,” takes a sober turn shortly thereafter, and for good reason. Punctuation is serious business. Sounding much more like the Adorno I know, the dour Marxist writes, “History has left its residue in punctuation marks, and it is history, far more than meaning or grammatical function, that looks out at us, rigidified and trembling slightly, from every mark of punctuation.” Okay.

Well, Adorno would just hate what I’m about to do, but—hey—this is the internet; who has the time and concentration to traverse the rocky course of thought he carves out in his work? Maybe you? Good, read the full essay. Not you? See below for some bite-sized highlights.

Punctuation as music: “punctuation marks,” Adorno writes, “are marks of oral delivery.” As such, they function like musical notation. “The comma and the period correspond to the half-cadence and the authentic cadence.” Exclamation points are “like silent cymbal clashes, question marks like musical upbeats.” Colons are like “dominant seventh chords.” Adorno, a musicologist and composer himself, heard things in these symbols most of us probably don’t.

The semicolon: There is no mark of punctuation that Adorno rejects outright. All have their place and purpose. He does decry the modernist tendency to mostly leave them out, since “then they simply hide.” But Adorno reserves a special pride of place for the semicolon. He claims that “only a person who can perceive the different weights of strong and weak phrasings in musical form” can understand the difference between semicolon and comma. He differentiates between the Greek and German semicolon. And he expresses alarm “that the semicolon is dying out.” This, he claims, is due to a fear of “page-long paragraphs”—the kind he often writes. It is “a fear created by the marketplace—by the consumer who does not want to tax himself.” Right, I told you, he would hate the internet, though he seems to thrive—posthumously—on Twitter.

Quotation marks: While Adorno accepts every punctuation mark as meaningful, he does not accept all uses of them. In the case of the quotation mark, his advice is precisely what I have received, and have passed on to overly glib and thoughtless students. Quotation marks, he writes, should only be used for direct quotes, “and if need be when the text wants to distance itself from a word it is referring to.” This can include writing words as words (the word “word” is a word…). Adorno rejects quotation marks as an “ironic device.” This usage presents “a predetermined judgment on the subject”; it offers a “blind verdict.”

The ellipsis: On this mark, Adorno becomes very prickly, particular, and, well… elliptical. Three dots “suggests an infinitude of thoughts and associations.” Two is the mark of a hack. I leave it to you to parse his reasoning.

The dash: First, we have “the serious dash,” in which “thought becomes aware of its fragmentary character.” Dashes may signal “mute lines into the past, wrinkles on the brow” of the text, ”uneasy silence.” Dashes need not connect thoughts. The “desire to connect everything,” Adorno writes, is the mark of “literary dilettantes.” Thus the “modern dash” is debased, a symptom of “the progressive degeneration of language.” It prepares us “in a foolish way for surprises that by that very token are no longer surprising.” Adorno also prefers another use of dashes—more below.

Parentheses: Parenthetical phrases (like this) create “enclaves” and admit the “superfluousness” of their contents, which is why many stylebooks frown upon them. Their use in this way “capitulate[s] to pedantic philistinism.” The “cautious writer”—writes punctiliously cautious Adorno—will place parentheticals between dashes, “which block off parenthetical material from the flow of the sentence without shutting it up in a prison.” The parentheses do have their place, as do all marks of punctuation in Adorno’s lexical theory. But probably only if you are Proust.

Reading Adorno—on punctuation and anything else—can be intimidating. His erudition, his disdain for carelessness, middlebrow expediency, and the crude forms of expression given birth by commerce of all kinds: these are attitudes that can seem at times like overbearing elitism. And yet, Adorno understands the burdensome nature of writing prescriptions. “The writer,” he admits, “is in a permanent predicament when it comes to punctuation marks: if one were fully aware while writing, one would sense the impossibility of ever using a mark of punctuation correctly and would give up writing altogether.” Far too many have done so. We “cannot trust in the rules,” nor can we ignore them. What to do? Err on the side of the abstemious says our poker-faced German Strunk; to avoid sloppiness or rote misuse, follow an Epicurean mean: “better too few than too many.”

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