Dr. Constance Weatherby

Biography

Dr. Weatherby's departure from Oxford in 1998 is still discussed in certain circles. The dispute—over whether the semicolon had become 'a marker of pretension rather than clarity'—led her to found our Department of Linguistic Anxieties. Now 78, she continues to research the psychology of punctuation choice, arguing that how one punctuates reveals more about personality than any standardized test.

Research Interests

• Punctuation as personality indicator
• The psychology of the semicolon
• Oxford comma anxiety disorders
• Exclamation point inflation in digital communication
• The death and resurrection of the interrobang

Selected Publications

• The Semicolon's Burden: Pretension, Clarity, and Punctuation Choice (Yale University Press, 2012)
• Em-Dash or Parenthesis: What Your Asides Say About You
• The Oxford Comma Wars: A Sociolinguistic Analysis of Punctuation Tribalism
• !!!: Exclamation Point Inflation in Electronic Communication, 1995-2020
• Period. Full Stop. The Aggression of Terminal Punctuation in Text Messages

Education

• D.Phil., English Language University of Oxford, 1975
• M.A., Linguistics University of Cambridge, 1971
• B.A., English Literature University of Edinburgh, 1969