Life, food, events, and community in Albuquerque, NM
Sex and the Semicolon (x-posted)
Are semicolons "transvestite hermaphrodites representing absolutely nothing"? Kurt Vonnegut thought so. Yet masculine wordsmith Herman Melville embraced the semicolon. The semicolon facilitates lengthy, sinuous sentences, such as those constructed by practitioners of romanticism. Jan Freeman recently mused about the allegedly epicene semicolon's adherents and detractors for the Boston Globe. Is the semicolon distaff?
Replies to This Discussion
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Permalink Reply by La Fanciulla del West on -
I had never really considered the semicolon's merits until the past year or so; now I'm simply smitten with ; . Strunk and White offers a glimmer of hope for the misused, underused, sometimes maligned piece of punctuation and points out that the semicolon is one of the most useful devices in composition; it's a simple method of indicating a relationship between sentences. Quick, easy, no superfluous words or capital letters required.
Something simple to indicate a relationship? Does that sound like I Am Woman?
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Permalink Reply by Paul on -
colons and semicolons can go to hell is far as I am concerned. Especially since the advent of cell phones and the obligations to try to make smiley faces out of them.
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Permalink Reply by Ginger James on -
Personally, i love dot dot dot... It leaves you thinking...
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Permalink Reply by Nora on -
Didn't he also say they only signify that you went to college?
I don't know; some people use them naturally and it works for them. Some people don't. I assume Vonnegut is in the latter category; there are plenty of writers who manage to pull them off.
I may, uh... not be one of them.
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Permalink Reply by Emily Redondo on -
The more the possibilities the better.
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Permalink Reply by Celeste Bradley on -
I know I should use them. I'm sure it would class up my writing--but I honestly don't get it. I always edit them out because I really don't feel secure in my usage. It just feels weird. I'm pretty much untrained, since I was published before I had the chance to go back to school for writing (I studied the visual arts before) so I know my work drives purists up the wall. I don't blame them really. I'm more a storyteller than a wordsmith. My journalist ex gave me Strunk and White but I still punctuate like a tenth-grader. Thank the gods for copy editors!
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