The Chronicle of Higher Education reports on the use of colons and subtitles in academic publishing. Some editors and authors argue that university publishers have overused the “title: subtitle” format in an attempt to make book titles either more descriptive or catchier.
Some examples from the Chronicle piece: With All, and for the Good of All: The Emergence of Popular Nationalism in the Cuban Communities of the United States, 1848-1898 (Duke University Press); Essential Subtleties on the Silver Sea: The Yin-Hai Jing-Wei: A Chinese Classic on Ophthalmology (University of California Press); Edwin J. Cohn and the Development of Protein Chemistry: With a Detailed Account of His Work on the Fractionation of Blood During and After World War II (Harvard University Press); and (my own favorite example) My Story as Told by Water: Confessions, Druidic Rants, Reflections, Bird-Watchings, Fish-Stalkings, Visions, Songs and Prayers Refracting Light, From Living Rivers, in the Age of the Industrial Dark (University of California Press).
[via Arts & Letters Daily]
I propose the title “Colonic Literature” for, particularly, academic papers abusing colons in their titles. This is a useful distinction, as such papers form a class, their content having strong similarities in the use of jargon-as-content.
Posted by Will Higgs | December 28, 2004, 12:06 pm