;-)
I just found this article on the history and slow demise of the semicolon. An excerpt:
When the Times of London reported in 1837 on two University of Paris law profs dueling with swords, the dispute wasn't over the fine points of the Napoleonic Code. It was over the point-virgule: the semicolon. "The one who contended that the passage in question ought to be concluded by a semicolon was wounded in the arm," noted the Times. "His adversary maintained that it should be a colon."
Who knew punctuation was so exciting? I like semicolons. I didn't know exactly what to do with them until my junior year of high school (Thanks Mrs. Jones!) but once properly introduced to them I started using them enthusiastically in my more formal writing. Perhaps a bit too enthusiastically. Readers of this blog are mostly spared the onslaught, but you still have to suffer through my egregious overuse of commas. Never satisfied with simple declaratory sentences, I tend to string together complicated networks of subordinate clauses with the aid of a small army of commas. I blame this unfortunate habit on early exposure to Dickens.
When the Times of London reported in 1837 on two University of Paris law profs dueling with swords, the dispute wasn't over the fine points of the Napoleonic Code. It was over the point-virgule: the semicolon. "The one who contended that the passage in question ought to be concluded by a semicolon was wounded in the arm," noted the Times. "His adversary maintained that it should be a colon."
Who knew punctuation was so exciting? I like semicolons. I didn't know exactly what to do with them until my junior year of high school (Thanks Mrs. Jones!) but once properly introduced to them I started using them enthusiastically in my more formal writing. Perhaps a bit too enthusiastically. Readers of this blog are mostly spared the onslaught, but you still have to suffer through my egregious overuse of commas. Never satisfied with simple declaratory sentences, I tend to string together complicated networks of subordinate clauses with the aid of a small army of commas. I blame this unfortunate habit on early exposure to Dickens.