Literary Use
John Clare (English peasant poet) wrote with his own spelling and no punctuation: he complained c.1820-1830 to his editors that people could understand him, and that he wouldn't use "that awkward squad of colon, semi-colon, comma, and full stop" (source - display in Clare's cottage, Helpston.)
In Villette (pub. 1853) Charlotte Bronte writes of M. Paul Emanuel: "Irritable he was; one heard that, as he apostrophized with vehemence the awkward squad under his orders."
In Chapter 16 of Our Mutual Friend (1864–65), Charles Dickens describes the character Sloppy as " Full-Private Number One in the Awkward Squad of the rank and file of life."
Norman Cameron ends one of his poems - Forgive me, sire - with the words 'awkward squad', which plays with the above definition. This would have been written at least about 50 years before the current use.
Read more about this topic: Awkward Squad
Famous quotes containing the word literary:
“I shall christen this style the Mandarin, since it is beloved by literary pundits, by those who would make the written word as unlike as possible to the spoken one. It is the style of all those writers whose tendency is to make their language convey more than they mean or more than they feel, it is the style of most artists and all humbugs.”
—Cyril Connolly (1903–1974)
“I have misplaced the Van Allen belt
the sewers and the drainage,
the urban renewal and the suburban centers.
I have forgotten the names of the literary critics.”
—Anne Sexton (1928–1974)