{ ; }

[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

[emily-reich.livejournal.com]

Actually, I've just re-read what you wrote. Are you saying that you'd read "the boys' [pl.] socks" as "the boyses socks"? Or are you just talking about nouns that end in s?

it depends on the noun, and also on the dialect of the speaker... some dialects DO pronounce it "boyzes" and such... i pronounce it on some words, but not all... but then, i don't have a problem with the rule :p

And it is a difficult rule, especially if you're not taught correctly. These days schools teach the standardised version but a lot of people still go by the old rule, myself included.

yeah, i still go by the old rule since that's how i was taught

Don't even get me started on trying to explain why its (possessive) doesn't have an apostrophe. (In that case, the only time 'its' has an apostrophe is if it means "it is"; otherwise "its" exists as a pronoun).

O.M.G. when people screw that up it drives me NUTS!!! it's worse than there, they're, their!! :P

a typo is one thing (we're all guilty of that :p), but when people just.don't.get.punctuation. no matter what (in formal writing and fiction and stuff) it just drives me bonkers! incorrect use of commas is the worst!

ok, done now :p