{ ; }

[delga]

Oh, people, come on. Let us celebrate the beauty that is the semi-colon. Seriously. learn how to use it. Love it. Embrace it into your world.

;

See? Isn't that a thing of beauty? Stop using it as a fucking apostrophe and stop replacing it with commas. Commas are like mice; they breed extraordinarily quickly.

Comments

[tigertrapped.livejournal.com]

Tell me truthfully - do I abuse the semi-colon? I was told at school (when I was about 11) that I did and it's haunted me ever since. In particular, I need to know if you've spotted instances of abuse in The Novel? I'd much rather not embarrass myself sending it out with basic grammatical errors in it.

[delgaserasca.livejournal.com]

Abuse in the sense of misuse or overuse or underuse? Not that I've noticed and I keep an eye on the poor sod these things. I'd have to take another look to be certain but I don't think so because I probably would have pointed it out.

[tigertrapped.livejournal.com]

Misuse is the only one that bothers me. Underuse/overuse can be explained by reference to the narrative style, usually. Knowing that you'd have pointed it out makes me happier. Funny how paranoid that stray remark at school has made me. I remember discovering the semi-colon and falling in love with it and wanting to use it all the time without really knowing when to start or stop. I also love the Oxford comma, but that got me into similar trouble.

[delgaserasca.livejournal.com]

I would definitely have picked up on misuse. I'm fanatical about it.

See, not such a fan of the Oxford comma. I understand the need to separate clauses but conjunctions imply that two clauses are being separated. Not always but mostly. But I've had to start using them because such is the norm these days.

[tigertrapped.livejournal.com]

My narrator is such a bitch for breaking rules that the Oxford comma is probably grist to her mill.

[delgaserasca.livejournal.com]

Ha! Yeah, whilst for me the Oxford comma is newfangled and illogical for the most part. I miss my old english teacher! He was so old-school about grammar - a true grammarian.