Hotel Mount Pleasant

Neglected Child of Punctuation?

This is quite possibly my favorite article this year; I love semicolons. The NY Times did a story some time ago on the same topic, but this is much better; yes, I found it linked from a blog.

Some gems, representing both sides of the debate:

If you really want to hurt your parents, and you don’t have the nerve to be a homosexual, the least you can do is go into the arts. But do not use semicolons. They are transvestite hermaphrodites, standing for absolutely nothing. All they do is show you’ve been to college.

Sometimes you get a glimpse of a semicolon coming, a few lines further on, and it is like climbing a steep path through woods and seeing a wooden bench just at a bend in the road ahead, a place where you can expect to sit for a moment, catching your breath.