Architecture student writes 149-page thesis without punctuation – The Ubyssey

May 21, 2015

A UBC architecture student has pushed the boundaries of writing a doctoral thesis, constructing his 52,428 word thesis without punctuation.

Patrick Stewart, a member of the Nisga’a First Nation, recently defended his thesis to professors and a public audience. Titled “Indigenous Architecture through Indigenous Knowledge,” the 149-page thesis contained little to no punctuation. Stewart inserted the odd question mark, but conventional modes of punctuation and grammar, including capitalization, commas, semicolons and periods, were left out.

“I wanted to express the content in that people will have to be paying attention to what they are reading and not necessarily be hung up on grammar,” said Stewart. “The dissertation is about indigenous architects using cultural knowledge in their design process. That would be the purpose in the dissertation. The use of no punctuation? That would be an underlying subtext to the dissertation.”

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