3. Capital letters.

According to the grammar rules capital letters are used in the first words of the text or a sentence after a full stop, exclaim or question marks and proper nouns.

When common nouns are written with the capital letter in address or personification it gives a special significance or elevated colouring.

O, music! Sphere-descended mard,

Friend of pleasure, Wisdom’s aid! (W.Collins)

If the way to Better there be, it exacts a full look at the worst (T.Hardy)

Words may be capitalized when perceived by the speaker as very important:

The first of Wednesday in every month was a Perfectly Awful Day – a day to be awaited with dread, endured with courage and forgotten with haste. (J.Webster)

Would you be terribly displeased, Daddy, if I didn’t turn out to be a Great Author after all, but just a Plain Girl? (J.Webster)

The only way I can ever repay you is by turning out a Very Useful Person. (J.Webster)

Yesterday, or Centuries before? (E.Dichenson)

Whole words may be written with capital letters to be pronounced with a special emphasis or very loudly: e.g., ” I did not kill Henry. NO,NO!” (D.M.Laurence)

You never answered my question and it was very important. ARE YOU BALD? (J.Webster)

Whatever Mrs. Semple’s faults, she is a HOUSEKEEPER. (J.Webster)

“AS – I – WAS – SAYING”, said Eyore loudly and sternly, “as I was saying when I was interrupted by various Loud Sounds, I feel that – “ (A.Milne)

3. Peculiarities of prints/types.

Italics (putting a word in italics) are used to show epigraph, quotations, barbarisms, titles, etc., everything which is felt as ailient to the text and needs strengthening (emphatic italics),

e.g.,I will write a respectable letter when it’s over. Tonight I have a pressing engagement with the Ablative Absolute. (J.Webster)

I’m crazy to go back and begin work. (J.Webster)

Sometimes several means can be employed.

Alors! I’m an AUTHOR. (J.Webster)

The poem Siesta of a Hungarian Snake by Edwin Morgan reproduces the sounds the snake may produce and their intensity :

s sz sz SZ sz SZ sz ZS zs ZS zs zs z

Many auxiliary verbs, pronouns, functional words, etc., which are normally not stressed may be written in italics when they appear to be very important or when some opposition is implied.

“Bella!”

“Yes, Master Jon.”

“Do let us have a tea, under the oak-tree when they come; I know They’d like it best”

“You mean you’d like it best”

Little Jon considered.

“No, They would, to please me”. (J.Galthorthy)

When will and would used as auxiliary verbs or to denote a customary action are stressed, it is done to express irritation or irony:

His wife was always out when she was in Town, and his daughter would flibberty – gibbet all over the place. (J.Galsthorthy)

A full form of an auxiliary verb written in italics expresses an emphatic statement:

Olwen (smiling): You are a baby, Robert. (J.B. Priestly)

Gordon (furious, rising and taking a step forward): You are a roller, Stanton (J.B.Priestly) expresses anger.

4.Graphic imagery

Graphic imagery is the division of a text into paragraphs or verse stauras, notched lines or shaped poems. Shaped poems were invented by Simmy of Rodoss from Ancient Greece and in Russia they were practiced by Semeon Polotsky. The term “shaped verse” speaks for itself: the lines of a verse are placed in such a way that it has a shape of some figure: a cross, a star, a heart, a triangle, etc. The form coincides with the topic and content.

THE INNER MAN

Their marriage was

a perfect union of trust

and understanding. They

shared everything – except

his desk drawer, which,

through the years remained

locked.

One day, curiosity

overcame her. Prised open,

there was – nothing.

‘But why?’ she asked,

confused and ashamed.

‘I need a space of my

own,’ he replied sadly.

Christine M. Banks

Doesn’t this poem remind the reader of a key-hole through which some like to peep into somebody else’s life?

The famous Mouse story from “Alice in Wonderland” by L.Carrol is created on the interaction of two devices: pun and a shaped verse. In general, graphic stylistic means are varied and connected with phonetic, grammatical, lexical and other means of expressiveness, e.g. punctuation may be expressive, reflecting different stylistic means (rhetoric question, aposiopeasis, etc.). The length of a line characterizes genie and subdivision into a storyteller’s part and a character’s part. Violation of spelling rules serves to characterize somebody’s speech, etc.