On semicolons.

[randomness]

From the Financial Times, September 17, 2005, archived at the author's website:

Pause Celebre

Carlyle's sumptuous prose was rich with them; Evelyn Waugh's fluid reveries depended on them.
The semicolon can be as subtle as a breath - so why do Americans hate it so much?

By Trevor Butterworth

http://www.trevorbutterworth.com/pause_celebre.htm

Full disclosure: I like semicolons and use them a bit more than I ought to, perhaps.

Comments

[marith.livejournal.com]

Americans hate semicolons? News to me. :) Like all things, they should be used in moderation, but they are lovely little punctuitems.

[r-ness.livejournal.com]

News to me.

I think in this case is the editorial and pundit class that's being described.

[apintrix.livejournal.com]

I... probably use semicolons more than I should. (Also ellipses. I just realized I can't actually spell that.)

Also, after reading an article about disused double-punctuation in 19th century prose (I believe it was in the collection "Ex Libris"), I began to adore the nuanced connections these markers afford. Stuff like " :...", ";..." and my favorite ";-". Emily Dickinson stuff. Why limit the range of the written word to describe the variety of expression we have available in our pauses in spoken speech?

Microsoft Word hates me.

[r-ness.livejournal.com]

I'm very fond of all the punctuation marks which let me more accurately describe my speech patterns. While my writing thus more accurately conveys my thought patterns, I do have some occasional concern about what this says about the chaos of my thoughts themselves. :)

Microsoft Word hates me.

Oh, it's nothing personal. Word hates everyone. :)

[sarakate.livejournal.com]

I like semicolons a lot, to the point where I have to restrain myself or I will write all my sentences in pairs with a semicolon between them.

[muffyjo]

That's beautiful!

Favorite lines (a small sample):
Had midnight been closer and the bottle emptier, we might have taken him literally; but the point still floated within the grasp of sober minds: if so great a prose stylist as William Hazlitt had embraced the semicolon, then surely we could too?

In fact, one attempt to quash San Francisco's gay marriage law last year was dismissed on the grounds that the plaintiff had used a semicolon instead of a conjunction. A conservative group had asked the court to order the city to "cease and desist issuing marriage licenses to and/or solemnising marriages of same-sex couples; to show cause before the court."

[dianec42.livejournal.com]

I am amused; no one has overused the semicolon in the comments yet!

[r-ness.livejournal.com]

Is that a challenge? ;)

[apintrix.livejournal.com]

somebody page Clyde.

[bookly.livejournal.com]

Full disclosure: I like semicolons and use them a bit more than I ought to, perhaps.

Ditto; you can see that in most of my LJ entries. :)

[rdansky.livejournal.com]

In her notes on my thesis, Judith Tarr described semicolons as "Lovecraftian abominations".

Seeing as the thesis was on Lovecraft, I took that as encouragement.

[r-ness.livejournal.com]

Indeed.

[digitalemur.livejournal.com]

Makes sense to me!

[malkin.livejournal.com]

I am very much pro-semicolon. I used to take great glee in teasing my former boss for his semicolon avoidance, whenever I had to edit any of his copy. So great was his disdain for semicolons that he used to go so far as to use incorrect punctuation, where a humble semicolon would have sufficed.

From the Illiterate Unwashed:

[ddreslough.livejournal.com]

Semicolon? Is that the winky smiley, or just the regular smiley?

I likes 'em all!

*goes back to raising chickens* :) ;)

[cathyr19355.livejournal.com]

Heh. I think I know why most Americans hate them. They hate them because they don't know how to use them. :-(

[qbaz.livejournal.com]

Wow, thanks for finding this, Leon. I adore semicolons; that said, my affection for them, like yours, is tinged with guilt and worry that perhaps I like them too much. I wonder why.