semicolon

The History of the Semi-Colon

And now we have The Semicolon Appreciation Society. Gotta get the shirt. :-)

Yes, great article. I love the photo of the creative writing MA finally getting acknowledgement for his punctuational flair after 30 years of drudgery in local government.

Great article, O! I especially like the correction. :-)

A semicolon rides the NY metro.

The post below is either a semicolon or a question mark: 'The Latin and the Greek interrogatives appeared at around the same time, the 8th century...; they developed independently, which is why they remain different—as is also the case with the semicolon. The Greek mark has ended up identical in shape to the Latin semicolon; and Unicode has taken the inevitable decision that, since they look identical, they are identical, and the semantics can take care of itself ("If the text is Greek, this is an interrogative..."): U+37E canonically decomposes to U+003B Semicolon, which means that the two are not underlyingly differentiated. It's just as well Greek has never attempted to introduce the Latin semicolon into the language.'

;

Ohhhh...so that's what that word means.

What is this "book" thing of which you speak? I like the idea of portable literature, but unless the battery life is good I can't be bothered.

Sheets of paper bound together? What? Never heard of it!

Precisely. I had a second meaning in mind too: "Made of sheets of paper bound together." :-P

Right. That's what I had in mind.

I think "conventional" was being used in this page to mean "a book everyone says you have to have read to be culturally literate." It's part of the canon of 20th-century American literature. I don't think anyone was using it (at least here) in the sense of being "humdrum" or "ordinary."

Wait, how is Vonnegut "conventional"? Slaughterhouse Five maybe a commonly read book, but it is completely different than anything I've ever read. Cat's Cradle is even stranger, and probably the funniest book I've ever read.

We always knew you were a closet intellectual.

After how many months, you're beginning to? ;-)

It's the username, isn't it? Hard to take a guy seriously with a name like uselessness. I like it. Catches people off guard. :-P

We can ban uselessness? Actually, lately I'm beginning to appreciate his intelligence through the comments he's been making. He's deeper than I thought.

Oh, for crying out loud, uselessness. I put it back. As though I don't have enough editing to do.... ;-)

And I still like Vonnegut. Especially his nonfiction, like Fates Worse than Death, and his sort of fiction/nonfiction, like Timequake.

Rule #4: Rules 1 through 3 are spot on, and yet... Conventional books are underrated.

A clever edit, reesetee, changing the name there, so future generations of Wordies will read this page and think I'm the crazy one...which I am, but that's beside the point.

No! Uselessness, I was referring to Vonnegut, not you! Good grief, I just finished telling you how well-read I think you are. I guess I was intending to...well, defend you...and the comment ended up in the wrong place. Fixed now.

Apologies. *bows head*

As for banning uselessness, anyone tries that and I think the rest of us would probably go along. :-)

Holy crap, you're lucky I wasn't around last night. Few men have said those kinds of things to my face and... um... avoided rumors being spread about their mothers behind their backs.

Rule #1 of Wordie: Don't ban uselessness.
Rule #2 of Wordie: Conventional books are overrated.
Rule #3 of Wordie: You don't have to be as smart as uselessness, if you make up for it with commentiness.

Never mind that he doesn't think we're as smart as he is. ;-)

Nah. Why bother? There aren't enough semicolons in those books.

I propose Uselessness be banned from Wordie until he at least reads Slaughterhouse Five and Cat's Cradle. It should only take a couple hours.

U, I didn't mean to imply you're less than ... well, that you're anything based solely on the fact that you hadn't heard of Vonnegut, or weren't familiar with his work. I am actually not that familiar with it, even though I've read at least two of his novels--whenever people reference his work, I never know what they're talking about. My surprise was just that you hadn't heard of him before/didn't know he was an author.

And his stuff is worth reading solely for this gem: "Why don't you take a flying fuck at a rolling doughnut? Why don't you take a flying fuck at the mooooooon?" (As I said, don't know what it means, but found it amusing when I was 14.)

P.S. Yarb, you hit the nail on the head! Haha!

Right!

I've assimilated plenty of information from the internet over the years, which isn't "reading" in the traditional sense, but I think it's had the effect of teaching me a little bit about a lot of different things. I just don't have much experience with literal page-turning. :-)

Yarb, you're making me laugh out loud in a very quiet office!

Funny, uselessness--I've always thought of you as very well-read, not in the "classic literature" sense, but still. :-)

So I haven't read his books? I am a terrible person. And I plan to remain one for the foreseeable future. A regular sinner. Sorry, Vonnegut.

I like Vonnegut's stories, but sometimes I feel like he's lecturing me. Especially in Breakfast of Champions, it's all "I'm Kurt Vonnegut, and I'm a smart guy who knows what's wrong with the world. Because you're reading my book, you must be a smart guy, too, although obviously not as smart as me. But all those other people who don't read my books, they're the problem. Not only are they not as smart as me and you, but because they're not reading my books they're not going to get any smarter. And those people are what my books are about."

Slaughterhouse Five is a great novel, though.

I am surprisingly, um, whatever the opposite of well-read is. Poorly read. But I'm working on it, slowly but surely.

But you're ever so well-versed in other areas, uselessness. :-)

Anyway, I never cared for Vonnegut myself.

Oh yes, my lack of culture rears its head. So I looked him up. Slaughterhouse Five guy. Got it. It's one of those books everybody's supposed to have read, but I never have. Am I still welcome on your literary web site?

Never heard of ...? Uselessness... really? *does not compute*

Never heard of Vonnegut... but I too love semicolons -- problem is, I have the bad habit of using too many of them, along with ellipses and dashes; I've wrestled with all three for years.

Yep. Bless him.

I love them, too; Vonnegut be damned.

Kurt Vonnegut said he hated them; I love them. Most of the time.