
Performing Punctuation
Intellect Books (Publisher)
Published on 20. March 2026
Book
Paperback/Softback
296 pages
978-1-83595-220-7 (ISBN)
Description
Performing Punctuation gathers writers/performers to highlight, question and contest colonising facets of English language punctuation, while looking for ways to reveal and rarefy these proprietary rules such that they are responsive, playful, generous, generative, and ultimately more inclusive.
A transdisciplinary collaborative book that brings awareness to the limiting effects of the prevailing dominance of English language and its vociferous use of punctuation. The book's content and design is guided by this question: How can English language punctuation discard its domineering and strident overcoat to enable a greater diversity of readers, listeners, performers, writers, and practices?
Performing Punctuation, bears out digressions, indiscretions, transgressions and fabulations of grammatical marks unfaithful to propriety. It makes public an on-going and refreshed movement to play humorously and tenaciously with those small but powerful writing marks that regulate, discipline and structure textual language and spoken discourse. These marks, symbols and rule-makers are anything but a mere neutral grammatical systems; they are language gremlins and pixies; inflecting and infecting agents with histories, voices and messages of their own accord. These marks are understood as part and parcel to the on-going colonising history of the English language.
The collection brings together of a range of voices - Maori and Pakeha - and the collaborative editorial relationship with contributors allows conversation to develop between the elements of the book.
A transdisciplinary collaborative book that brings awareness to the limiting effects of the prevailing dominance of English language and its vociferous use of punctuation. The book's content and design is guided by this question: How can English language punctuation discard its domineering and strident overcoat to enable a greater diversity of readers, listeners, performers, writers, and practices?
Performing Punctuation, bears out digressions, indiscretions, transgressions and fabulations of grammatical marks unfaithful to propriety. It makes public an on-going and refreshed movement to play humorously and tenaciously with those small but powerful writing marks that regulate, discipline and structure textual language and spoken discourse. These marks, symbols and rule-makers are anything but a mere neutral grammatical systems; they are language gremlins and pixies; inflecting and infecting agents with histories, voices and messages of their own accord. These marks are understood as part and parcel to the on-going colonising history of the English language.
The collection brings together of a range of voices - Maori and Pakeha - and the collaborative editorial relationship with contributors allows conversation to develop between the elements of the book.
More details
Series
Language
English
Place of publication
United Kingdom
Publishing group
Intellect
Target group
College/higher education
Illustrations
61 Illustrations, color; 70 Illustrations, black and white
Dimensions
Height: 243 mm
Width: 171 mm
Thickness: 26 mm
Weight
784 gr
ISBN-13
978-1-83595-220-7 (9781835952207)
Copyright in bibliographic data and cover images is held by Nielsen Book Services Limited or by the publishers or by their respective licensors: all rights reserved.
Schweitzer Classification
Persons
Julieanna Preston's transdisciplinary creative practice research is concerned with the agency and ethics of materiality, its relation to place, ecology and ways of being in the world. Her practice engages place-responsive live art performance, vocalisation, and performance writing. She currently teaches and supervises postgraduate students across art, design and architecture in Aotearoa NZ.
Anna Brown is New Zealand-based designer, researcher and educator. She is Professor of Design and Public Good at Massey University's College of Creative Arts. She works with visual artists and curators to investigate through form, materials and typography how the vehicle of the book can amplify the content it contains.
Anna Brown is New Zealand-based designer, researcher and educator. She is Professor of Design and Public Good at Massey University's College of Creative Arts. She works with visual artists and curators to investigate through form, materials and typography how the vehicle of the book can amplify the content it contains.
Editor
Massey University.
Massey University College of Creative Arts Toi Rauwharangi
Content
Welcome
chain /
/
/ link /
/
/ throat
To Listen Poetry
Between the Words
Shell on Sure, Graphic Shaming and / as Gender Slamming
Wetness - a sensuous politics of punctuation
A Short Line with a Long Shadow
WE ARE THE VA / NOW
Dots on a Page
Yes O Do Please Stop
Encountering One's Footprints in Snow or: On Paragraphs
Steppes
acut inside the questions
that are due to our souths
attempting
to write outside a limit
Bridging Portmanteau
beginning
........Same as it ever was........
PUNCT-ing
Holding Together Briefly:
I begin with ' and end with ?
Interrobanging
Girlspeak
The Meaning of This:
Performing Asemic Writing
23 Deluge
..--- ...-- / -.. . .-.. ..- --. .
Liberated from Language:
Punctuation's Performativity
in the Absence of Words
A holding practice
semicolon comma shift return
Homogenised, Pasteurised and
Recognisable: Empowering Children
to Decentre the Dominance of
Standard English Spelling,
Punctuation and Grammar
A Meaningful Site: Space (bar)
and Weak Rays
Exploded House (Philomena)
A conversation with Beatriz Ferreyra,
with her Echo(e)s, in her Absence,
without Time Signatures
Slashing and Asterisking
Noctalgia
chain /
/
/ link /
/
/ throat
To Listen Poetry
Between the Words
Shell on Sure, Graphic Shaming and / as Gender Slamming
Wetness - a sensuous politics of punctuation
A Short Line with a Long Shadow
WE ARE THE VA / NOW
Dots on a Page
Yes O Do Please Stop
Encountering One's Footprints in Snow or: On Paragraphs
Steppes
acut inside the questions
that are due to our souths
attempting
to write outside a limit
Bridging Portmanteau
beginning
........Same as it ever was........
PUNCT-ing
Holding Together Briefly:
I begin with ' and end with ?
Interrobanging
Girlspeak
The Meaning of This:
Performing Asemic Writing
23 Deluge
..--- ...-- / -.. . .-.. ..- --. .
Liberated from Language:
Punctuation's Performativity
in the Absence of Words
A holding practice
semicolon comma shift return
Homogenised, Pasteurised and
Recognisable: Empowering Children
to Decentre the Dominance of
Standard English Spelling,
Punctuation and Grammar
A Meaningful Site: Space (bar)
and Weak Rays
Exploded House (Philomena)
A conversation with Beatriz Ferreyra,
with her Echo(e)s, in her Absence,
without Time Signatures
Slashing and Asterisking
Noctalgia