A Teach Me How To Dewey production

This Is How We Dewey:

• 410 Linguistics
• 411 Writing systems
• 412 Etymology
• 413 Dictionaries
• 414 Phonology
• 415 Structural systems (Grammar)
• 416 No longer used—formerly Prosody (linguistics)
• 417 Dialectology & historical linguistics
• 418 Standard usage; Applied linguistics
• 419 Verbal language not spoken or written

Regarding the post title: what did you expect? This is a section all about words! (Plus I love pasta.) But just look at this beautiful list of literary terms. I’ve heard of probably 10% of them, but I wish to know them all, to hug them tenderly and use them liberally in my own writing and speech. Any other word nerds out there? My logophilia is partly inherited (my late grandfather loved crosswords and learning languages throughout his life), but it’s also a learned love, facilitated by reading more and more things in increasingly diverse genres and forms.

I want to give a special shout-out to the first of the Dew3 picks: it’s pure punctuation porn for weirdos like me who could admire various punctuation marks all day. In fact, I now have plans for the weekend…

The Dew3:

Shady Characters: The Secret Life of Punctuation, Symbols & Other Typographical Marks
By Keith Houston
Dewey: 411
Random Sentence: “Case closed ;)”

Is That A Fish in Your Ear? Translation and the Meaning of Everything
By David Bellos
Dewey: 418.02
Random Sentence: “For your aches / Carat cakes / Are the cure.”

Bastard Tongues: A Trailblazing Linguist Finds Clues to Our Common Humanity in the World’s Lowliest Languages
By Derek Bickerton
Dewey: 417.2
Random Sentence: “Wolf has taken daddy, gone, and eaten him.”