"White encouraged Updike's equally scrupulous commitment. They bonded over dashes, colons, and commas--most amazingly in an exchange of letters in the last two months of 1954 concerning two poems, "The Sunflower" and "The Clan." She wanted to make his punctuation consistent; he wanted to make his light verse flow in a manner pleasing to the ear and the eye. When he suggested changes to the proof of "Sunflower"--literally begging for a colon rather than a dash at the end of a particular line ("A colon is compact, firm, and balanced: a dash is sprawling, wishy-washy, and gawky. The colon suggests the Bible: the dash letters and memoirs of fashionable ladies")--she replied with a three-page "treatise on punctuation" and a transcription of the relevant paragraph from H. W. Fowler's Dictionary of Modern English Usage (the standard reference at The New Yorker, thanks to Harold Ross, who always kept a copy handy). She urged him to "try to feel more kindly toward the dash"--and closed with characteristic graciousness: "I want to add that I am delighted to find anyone who cares as much as this about punctuation and who is as careful as you are about your verse. . . . And I thank you for a very interesting and amusing letter."