The KISS Grammar Printable Workbooks Back to April Menu for Grade 10

Notes for
Nathaniel Hawthorne's The Scarlet Letter

Exercise # 1 - A Study in Semicolons
Semicolons That Separate Subordinate Clauses

Ex # 1 AK Punctuation - Punctuation
     This could be a good two-part exercise. 
     First, give the students the unpunctuated punctuation exercise and have them do and then discuss it, or
    give the students the analysis exercise, but tell them to use the text as a decombining exercise. (Have the students rewrite the passage separating it into several main clauses.) This, of course, again should be followed by discussion of the differences in the students' versions.
     After the students have done the punctuation exercise or the decombining exercise, have them analyze the two sentences in the passage.

     Leon Edel quotes this passage in his "Hawthorne's Symbolism and Psychoanalysis." I was tired when I was reading the essay, and I got lost in this passage. Going back to figure out what I had read, I found another example of semicolons being used to separate subordinate clauses. Since this use of the semicolon is rarely discussed in grammar textbooks, I decided to use the passage as a KISS exercise. 
    Literary works are punctuated in different ways in different editions. The text used for the exercise is from page 109 in Hidden Patterns: Studies in Psychoanalytic Literary Criticism. Ed. Leonard and Eleanor Manheim. New York, The Macmillan Company, 1966, 93-111. An interesting research project might be to have students compare the spelling and punctuation in several different editions of the work.