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

[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. :)