How Many Hobbits?

For those who don’t know me, I’m a demographer. I study population. And my first love in fantasy was, of course, Middle Earth. How many people live in Middle Earth? Being a demographer, I was mainly interested in the data side of things. Tolkien is frustratingly vague about population. He almost never gives us estimates of settlement sizes, and many of the larger metropolises of Middle Earth (like Pelargir) never actually appear on the page....

December 14, 2023

The American Style of quotation mark punctuation makes no sense

Years ago, I translated an essay by Terry Windling, On Tolkien and Fairie-Stories, from American English to Italian. I remember arguing with the author about her use of periods in quotations. Each quotation would end with a period before the closing mark. I was puzzled. We don’t do that in Italy. More importantly, I read many English texts where the period was left outside the quotation itself. She insisted that her style was correct1....

September 16, 2021