the american first edition used a punctuation mark (resembling an equals sign: '=') between sentences (after full stops, exclamation marks or question marks; in the earlier "egoist" version it had been an m-dash). it has been claimed that these were an attempt by lewis, an artist, to introduce 'painterly strokes' into literature. this has, however, been disputed by dr. john constable, who believes that they are nothing more than a german punctuation mark briefly adopted by lewis. lewis himself wrote to ezra pound about this when reconstructing missing parts of the manuscript for the u.s. edition: "were those parallel lines = quinn mentions kept going by the egoist, or not? could not they be disinterred, & used by knopf?" (lewis to pound, october 1917). evidently not all were disinterred, as large stretches of the book as published are without them.