It was Carl Sagan who said, "Across the millennia, an author is
speaking clearly and silently inside your head, directly to you." It is a
way for the dead to communicate with us and reveal their souls to the
generations that come after them. The four characters that make up the word
'word' may be simple and short but have come to unify Babel in so many
ways. Books have become a way for
authors to inspire mankind throughout the centuries.
The art of language is
not unlike the art of dance. Certain moves and positions of the body let an
audience know that the performer is telling a story. The narrator is
explaining, through fluid motions of his anatomy, any number of emotions. The
short pause of a semicolon is like a glissade of a sentence, linking together
two ideas — or more. That brief pause that lets you know what's about to come
next is as important as what was just written, or said, or performed.
Words have the ability to
make believers out of nonbelievers, to marry people and ideas, to change lives
for better or worse, and to save lives. It is so easy to become seduced by the
smooth vernacular of a practiced bibliophile. It's not always the
million-dollar words that make you fall in love with language and books —
sometimes it's just the simple ones, little words or phrases and the
accompanying expressive punctuation that let you glimpse the true meaning and
intent that the author feels compelled to share.
Without words ,what do we
have? How do we express who we are? Language has given us a wellspring of
expressive utterances to show how we care: love, hate, indifference and
tolerance. By just speaking the three little words "I love you," you
can literally change someone's life — and your own. The flipside of that phenomenon
is that you can ruin someone else's life, too. Choose your words carefully. For
some, words come easily; for others, not at all. What separates those who have
a way with words from those who do not seems to be an adoration for phraseology
and style, providing they're not so book-bound that they become tongue-tied.
