This international workshop, “Punctuation in Practice,” investigates how punctuation—as a way to organize syntax and mark pauses on the page—changes throughout literary history. The workshop seeks to explore a range of punctuation practices (or lack thereof) from medieval manuscripts through printed drama and poetry to the novel and contemporary literature by bringing together experts from a range of genres and time periods (medieval, early modern, 18th-century, 19th-century, 20th-century, and contemporary).

This workshop takes as its starting point Adorno’s statement about the historicity of punctuation (“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”). With a focus on historical conventions and change, this workshop will explore how punctuation organizes the basic structures underpinning our expectations about literary style, conventions, and genres. Above all else, this workshop focuses on how punctuation signals different forms of “voice” in the printed medium, and thus, how these changing forms of “voice” point to palpable and perceptible shifts in literary writing.

The workshop places a seemingly invisible practice—punctuation—at the forefront of a range of methodological questions in literary studies, including genre theory, conventional expectations, language standardization, editorial theory, textual theory, notions of authorial intention and interpretation, and the act of reading.

The workshop seeks to explore relationships among the following topics:
- Punctuation and paleography
- Punctuation and the standardization of language (spelling, grammar, lexicography, printed forms)
- Punctuation and textual materiality (page layout, visuality and textuality, typography, graphic organization, the printed book, book history, visibility/invisibility)
- Punctuation and conventions (printing conventions, printers’ manuals, house style regulations, generic expectations)
- Punctuation and the history of the English language
- Punctuation and linguistics
- Punctuation and editorial theory/textual editing
- Punctuation as a marker of thought, speech, voice, quotation, citation.
- Punctuation in and across genres
- Punctuation and translation; cross-pollination of punctuation practices between languages or speech communities
- Punctuation use in technology (email, texting, social media, programming language)