Another Author’s Insight: Frances Richard.

Stress is not only a fact of engineering, but a property of language; punctuation is a system for designating in writing the critical points were emphasis—stress—is to be laid. “Point” and “punctuation,” furthermore, are etymologically related, both deriving from the Latin pungere, to prick or pierce. DESTRUCTIONAL PUNCTUATION is therefore not as contrary as it seems. Holes made by piercing a built fabric and dots or dashes laid down to punctuate a text perform analogous functions, creating order by introducing spaces. Thus inflected, the building becomes articulate, legible. As such, although it has been destroyed, it WORKS. It performs an unexpected cultural labor, becoming operational at a new level. . . .

~ in Gordon Matta-Clark: Physical Poetics, University of California Press (2019).

 

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The Curse of Aldo Manuzio.

Read more about Aldo Manuzio (alias Aldus Manutius) HERE.

 

Is This Cool, or What?

I just discovered … FIRE!

Er … not exactly … what I really did, was invent … THE WHEEL!

Em … or maybe it was … THE INTERNET!

Uh … no … Al Gore says he did that. Well….

I guess I’m just a bit slow getting out of the starting blocks, because … I used the Read Out Loud function in Adobe Acrobat®, for the first time. Microsoft® Sam can proofread and find typos, and he doesn’t get tired. With a little manipulation of the spelling and punctuation in Irish Firebrands, Sam’s diction improved enough, that he even spoke a little Gaeilge. In only one evening, Sam and I turned the front matter and nearly all of Chapter 1 of Irish Firebrands into decent-sounding audible text.

Now, Ma will be able to “read” my novel, just like the talking books she gets from the Library for the Blind.

How cool is that?

March 1 Update: Got that new CPU up and running, and Sam is not one of the available voices. How sad — he was one of only two (that I know of, at least) that could pronounce “Celtic” correctly, without being helped.

Programming ENIAC