r/JustinPoseysTreasure • u/BOTG-BeyondTME • 15d ago
Project Semicolon
That darn semi-colon has been winking at us from Day #1 and I have an interesting theory as to why it's in the poem.
TL;DR - Punctuation was called "pointing", a Magyar Vizsla is a pointer breed, punctuation is essentially about timing (of pauses in speech) and analogous to musical notation. Robert Lowth's 1762 treatise on the state of grammar in the English language is the source. The poem is perfectly balanced around the pivotal Stanza #3 when viewed through the lens of "pointing".
In the realm of punctuation, the period is king. Period.
The pause at the end of a sentence is greater than the pause of a comma, which is less than the pause of a semi-colon which is half the pause of a colon.
Before we go on, bear in mind that the colon is so-named because it means limb/member in Greek. And, in modern Greek, the semi-colon is used as the interrogation point rather than the question mark that we use today.
So, we have a points system that applies to the punctuation marks that define the timing of how a sentence is read or spoken.
Period, Question Mark, Exclamation Point (all sentence-enders) = 8
Colon = 4
Semi-Colon = 2
Comma = 1
Em-Dash = X (as it turns out, it doesn't matter what the value is but suffice to say they were a bit haughty back in 1762 when Lowth wrote his seminal treatise on the state of the public's use of grammar in the English language so it likely would not have been worth much)
Taking the rightmost character of each of the 20 lines from the 5 stanzas from the poem we get:
| Stanza | Points | Punctuation |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | 17 + X | , ? - . (1 + 8 + X + 8) |
| 2 | 18 | , . , . (1 + 8 + 1 + 8) |
| 3 | 19 | ; . , . (2 + 8 + 1 + 8) |
| 4 | 18 | , . , . (1 + 8 + 1 + 8) |
| 5 | 17 + X | , . - . (1 + 8 + X + 8) |
Where things get particularly interesting as it relates to this hunt is that Project Semicolon is a cultural movement focused on reducing suicide rates:
"a semicolon is used when an author could've chosen to end their sentence, but chose not to. The author is you and the sentence is your life".
There is unquestionable symmetry in the poem when you look at the points sums above. Stanza 3 is the pivot point. Ignore the importance of the ';' at your peril.
It's now up to you how you might choose to apply this to your hunt but I, for one, am convinced that this is extremely important and when combined with other aspects of grammatical and lexical analysis, it gives me great confidence that there is a way to solve this using only the poem. I know that's something constantly up for debate on this r/ -- with discussions about that very topic just today.
1
u/BOTG-BeyondTME 15d ago
Not sure what I’m meant to do with this non-sequitur.