A truth universally acknowledged? Oh, you betcha!

It’s a truth universally acknowledged that everything awesome is somehow related to Jane Austen: forgiving empire-cut dresses, Colin Firth, Alan Rickman, funny girls who get the guy, Colin Firth, and of course, Amy Heckerling’s contemporary classic Clueless, built on Emma. – Jezebel

True, true. I guess that’s why it’s a truth universally acknowledged . . .

It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single woman starring in a romantic comedy, must be in want of a man — and have a best friend (or sister) on hand to crack wise and provide emotional support while she deals with him. – Vulture

That IS pretty universal, and kind of annoying.

It is a truth universally acknowledged that a single person with a reasonably nice standard of living must be in want of a Swedish partner. – “The Official Gateway to Sweden”

Funny, I never knew that . . . Sounds like the ’70s.

It is a truth universally acknowledged that a social landlord with green aspirations must be in want of a trophy wife. – Inside Housing

WHAT??

It’s a truth universally acknowledged that a farmer in possession of gelignite is in want of somewhere better to put it than the steps of the Balclutha police station. – Homepaddock

Now I’m really lost . . .

It is a truth universally acknowledged that a novelist in want of an idea will eventually take possession of one of Jane Austen’s.  – The Telegraph

Yeah, and that they’ll start their book with “It is a truth universally acknowledged . . . .” Alas.

It is a truth universally acknowledged that anyone can have a blog. – Universally Acknowledged

You said it, sister. And that they’ll all NAME their blogs “A truth universally acknowledged.”

Even a science blog! – A truth universally acknowledged

Is there an echo in here?

It is a truth universally acknowledged, that there are only two kinds of bacteria. One is Escherichia coli and the other is not.  – “The ABC of symbiosis” by J. Allan Downie and J. Peter W. Young

So which one killed Jane Austen?

It is a truth universally acknowledged that a writer beginning a piece with “It is a truth universally acknowledged” must be in want of ideas. – The Sydney Morning Herald

I thought there was an echo in here!

P.S. Hey everyone, please go read this before you acknowledge any more universal truths: Irony. Thank you.

Photo credit: ©Leonieke Aalders. Used under Creative Commons licensing.

Dashing Dashwoods Dash Dastard

We have spoken before about Jane Austen’s individualistic punctuation. Many of us feel that Austen’s incessant dashes, and other weird habits were ebullient—that we’d like to be as free as she was, even if our ever-copyediting hearts might tidy things up a little bit for other people.

Now there is a fracas afoot regarding Austen’s punctuation! Word on the street is that two chapters of the original manuscript for Persuasion will be on view at the British Library from November 12 to April 3 as part of the Evolving English exhibit. (Hey everyone, field trip!) Well, there has been back and forth about Miss Austen and her punctuation. Here’s Roger Walshe, curator of the exhibit:

Austen hardly punctuates at all, so what you get is a much more urgent form of language which becomes more restrained when it is edited. There tends to be an awful lot of clauses and sub-clauses. There is the odd comma, but they aren’t always in the most rational places. There are no paragraphs. It’s like she’s telling a story rather than writing one. The amazing thing is that there are so few corrections. You can imagine her thinking through a scene and then rushing to write it down. That’s possibly why the dialogue works so well, and why [film adaptations] are so successful.There is a real sense of urgency – more so than the slightly more restrained form you get from the novels.

This has led to snide comments about people’s comma usage and spirited rebuttals about artistic license (which take a comment of Walshe’s quite out of context). I’m kind of expecting that we’ll next see something about Jane Austen being the foremother of lolspeak and generally informal writing habits online, like abbreviations and the elongation of words to suggest tones of voice. (I feel impossibly elderly writing that, but wtf, i can roflol all night looooonnngggg. Righhhhtttt.)

All I’m saying is, I love to see a good comma fracas, and especially one where Our Girl Jane takes center stage! People getting passionate about language, that’s what we need! I hardly even care what they say—it just does my heart good—. With extra dashes!—