In/visible Punctuation

Abstract

The article offers two approaches to the question of 'invisible punctuation,' theoretical and critical. The first is a taxonomy of modes of punctuational invisibility, identifying denial, repression, habituation, error and absence. Each is briefly discussed and some relations with technologies of reading are considered. The second considers paragraphing, or lack of it, in Sir Philip Sidney's Apology for Poetry: one of the two early printed editions and at least one of the two MSS are monoparagraphic, a feature always silently eliminated by editors as a supposed carelessness. It is argued that this is improbable and that one form the Defence may have taken at Sidney's hands (and those of his literary executors) was monoparagraphic, a matter affecting the tone, genre and the understanding of his argument. A short conclusion considers the current state of punctuational invisibility in relation to digital awareness.