Archive for the ‘punctuation’ tag
On Semicolons #
I wasn’t aware of the massive unpopularity of semicolons among male literary types; apparently only the effete are supposed to use them.
Ben McIntyre, writing in the Times of London a couple of months later, added to the collection of semicolon snubbers: Kurt Vonnegut called the marks “transvestite hermaphrodites representing absolutely nothing.” Hemingway and Chandler and Stephen King, said McIntyre, “wouldn’t be seen dead in a ditch with a semi-colon (though Truman Capote might). Real men, goes the unwritten rule of American punctuation, don’t use semi-colons.”
Commas, Turning Up, Everywhere #
As someone who tends to use more commas than are needed, I appreciated this brief story:
WASHINGTON—In the midst of a crisis that may have reached a breaking, point Tuesday afternoon, linguists, and grammarians, everywhere say they are baffled, by the sudden and seemingly random, appearance of commas, in our nation’s sentences. The epidemic of errant punctuation has spread, like wildfire, since signs of the epidemic first, appeared in a Washington Post article, on Federal Reserve Chairman, Ben, Bernanke. “This, is an unsettling trend,” columnist William Sa,fire, told reporters. “We’re seeing a collapse of the grammatical rules that have, held, the English language, together for, centuries.” Experts warn, that if this same, phenomenon, should occur with ellipses…
The “Blog”of “Unnecessary” Quotation Marks #
Lacking much else interesting to tell you to look at: an old favorite. I love this “blog,” and I love when my grandmother address letter to me as “‘David.’”