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卷十二 四、西人对句读之重视


  (五年一月四日)

  Punctilious Punctuation

  Talking of the supreme importance of the comma, a correspondent states that Thomas Campbell once walked six miles to a printing office to have a comma in one of his poems changed into a semicolon. There is a remarkable resemblanee between this and the story of Sir William Hamilton, Astronomer Royal of Ireland, making a lengthy expedition to Dublin to have a semi-colon substituted for a colon.

  ——London Evening Standard

  〔中译〕

  谨小慎微之句读

  言及逗号之重要性,有一位记者报道:托马斯·坎贝尔曾经步行六英里,去一家印刷所,为的是要将他一篇诗作中之一逗号改成分号。另有一件事与此极其类似。爱尔兰皇家天文学家维廉·哈密顿爵士也曾长途跋涉,去都柏林,为的是要将一分号改为冒号。

  ——《伦敦标准晚报》

  此二则甚有趣。人之视句读如是其重也!此与“吟成一个字,捻断几根髭”,同一精神,同一作用。


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