Over at www.gawker.com, flagship of superhip internet empire: Gawker Media, they’ve posted an obituary sure to dishearten all of us English majors and nerds: the death of the semicolon.
Over at The Guardian they have posted a fabulous set of contrasting viewpoints on the topic:
“I love a good semicolon, but this sounds like one of those Literature is Dead! Stories that The New York Times likes to run,” he says. “I’ve never heard from a reader confused by one of my semicolons, and I don’t remember ever throwing a book aside for being semicolon-free.”
The late Kurt Vonnegut, meanwhile, takes the subtle approach and compares semicolons to cross-dressing she-males: “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,” he has cautioned. “They are transvestite hermaphrodites, standing for absolutely nothing. All they do is show you’ve been to college.”
Where do you stand on the topic?
