McCulloch — “Perfectly following a list of punctuation rules may…”

Source: Because Internet: Understanding the New Rules of Language — Gretchen McCulloch

Book page: mcculloch-because-internet-part-1

From: Because Internet: Understanding the New Rules of Language — Quotes

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Perfectly following a list of punctuation rules may grant me some kinds of power, but it won’t grant me love. Love doesn’t come from a list of rules—it emerges from the spaces between us, when we pay attention to each other and care about the effect that we have on each other. When we learn to write in ways that communicate our tone of voice, not just our mastery of rules, we learn to see writing not as a way of asserting our intellectual superiority, but as a way of listening to each other better. We learn to write not for power, but for love. But for all the subtle vocal modulations that typography can express, we’re not just voices. We still need a way to convey the messages that we send with the rest of our bodies.