Here are two examples of writers who told the reader to put it where they felt it would do the most good (punctuation, that is). The first is from Timothy Dexter.
Timothy Dexter promoted himself. That's advertising in its baddest form, but Timothy Dexter made his fortune, the old fashion way by buying low and selling high. He exported bed warmers to the tropics. Now bed warmers in those days (early 1800's) were designed to have coals placed within them and when covered with the accompanying top were placed in the New England beds to take off the chill. How do you imagine that bed warmers would have a place in the Indies? As luck would have it or perhaps because of his genius, the molasses trade was in need of equipment and these same bed pans and their tops were modified only slightly to become skimmers and ladles which were desperately needed in the refining of molasses. Mark one up for our friend Timothy Dexter. And he shipped woolen mittens to the tropics as well, and as usual made a fortune. How? Shipping was and is an international trade. Just because an items destination is Barbados doesn't mean that the item will be unloaded there, in fact, Dexter's mittens found their way to Russia. There is even more, but you will have to delve into it on your own. Timothy Dexter is best known for his self-published book A Pickle for the Knowing Ones In it he draws attention to the use of punctuation marks by providing a series which he instructs the reader to insert at those places which the reader might deem most appropriate.
Draper's instructions are reminiscent of the note which was added to a parody by P. G. Patmore who in his Rejected Article(a) a book published in 1926 wrote a review of Brother Jonathan (a book popular at the time, written by the American, John Neal).
Patmore wrote: "The reader will have the goodness to attribute the singular punctuation of these extracts to anybody but us. Whether it has been invented by the printer of Brother Jonathan, or the author, is more than we can guess. But of this we have very little doubt, that one most prevailing cause of the want of success of the work is this very system (for it is done, not by accident, but on a kind of system, such as it is) of pointing(b) ^� which mangles and fritters away the effect of many of the finest passages, and changes not a few into pure and impracticable nonsense." (
a) John Strachan's, Vol 5, Rejected Articles, Pickering & Chatto,
London, 1999.
(b) punctuation.
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