James Joyce does things with punctuation that should not work. Long stretches of prose with no periods. Sentences that start without capitals. Dialogue that runs into narration without quotation marks. A copyeditor would have a heart attack. The writing works. The punctuation choices make it work. The Breathlessness of No Periods Near the end of Ulysses, […]
Someone once told me that the secret to travel is to stop trying to see everything and start trying to actually be somewhere. We were planning our honeymoon in Paris in 2013. I had numerous maps. I had planned routes. I had calculated how many days in each arrondissement, how many museums I could visit […]
I’ve spent enough time in countries where I don’t speak the language to know that Google Translate is a liar. It will give you words. It will not give you meaning. A direct translation might be technically correct, but it almost never lands the way you want it to. Meaning lives in context, in tone, […]
I have lived in Thailand, Germany, and China. Nine years across three countries, where I arrived speaking almost none of the language each time. You learn quickly that communication is not about knowing the right words. It is about reading the room. In Thailand, I learned to simplify. The Thai language relies heavily on context […]