author's note: Of course I'm being frivolous, so adjust your expectations accordingly.
The punctuation marks are often misused, much-maligned, and under assault by text-messaging teens. The comma, spliced more often than Pinky and the Brain's genes, often heralds incompetence whenever it appears. The hyphen---or em dash---is too often used to set off an appositive in exactly the sort of place a comma should be doing the job for which it was designed. The exclamation point? OMG!!!!!1!1! It's lost its punch. The apostrophe, well, if I see any more apostrophe's used as plural's I might grow leaves, change my name to Bob, and start ranting.
All of the above, however, have simply been destroyed by misuse. There is one punctuation mark that has been destroyed not by misuse but by neglect and that is the humble semicolon. Laugh all you want; used properly the semicolon has a place in any well-constructed sentence. Consider this quote from Andrew Ryan in BioShock: "Is a man not entitled to the sweat of his brow? No says the man in Washington; it belongs to the poor. No says the man in The Vatican; it belongs to God. No says the man in Moscow; it belongs to everyone." Sure, you could use commas for the same effect; the sentence stands out for its use of semicolons.
I am far from the first to lament the blatant disregard for the semicolon. Slate magazine [http://www.slate.com/id/2194087/] lamented its demise while simultaneously hammering an additional nail into the mark's coffin by pointing out its primary modern usage as a means to express a wink in an Internet chat room. It seems the semicolon was fatally wounded by Samuel Morse and his code; nonetheless, it persists and prevails since so many dedicated writers are committed to its proper use. We may be called elitists; Kurt Vonnegut famously remarked that "All semicolons do is show that you've been to college." You are correct, Kurt; I have been to college. That is not, however, why I use the point-virgule with such gusto.
It is not enough to simply write concisely; one must put flavor into his work. Breaking out the thesaurus and committing never to use the same fifty-cent word twice is one thing. Writing like Hemingway and lampshading one's own writing style is another. Still, there is one method that simply cannot be beaten; use of the semicolon is exactly the sort of punch that like a vintage Mike Tyson left hook the reader never sees coming and by which he is knocked for a rhetorical and grammatical loop. That is the sort of writing that is remembered; let us celebrate the semicolon and all of its glory.
The punctuation marks are often misused, much-maligned, and under assault by text-messaging teens. The comma, spliced more often than Pinky and the Brain's genes, often heralds incompetence whenever it appears. The hyphen---or em dash---is too often used to set off an appositive in exactly the sort of place a comma should be doing the job for which it was designed. The exclamation point? OMG!!!!!1!1! It's lost its punch. The apostrophe, well, if I see any more apostrophe's used as plural's I might grow leaves, change my name to Bob, and start ranting.
All of the above, however, have simply been destroyed by misuse. There is one punctuation mark that has been destroyed not by misuse but by neglect and that is the humble semicolon. Laugh all you want; used properly the semicolon has a place in any well-constructed sentence. Consider this quote from Andrew Ryan in BioShock: "Is a man not entitled to the sweat of his brow? No says the man in Washington; it belongs to the poor. No says the man in The Vatican; it belongs to God. No says the man in Moscow; it belongs to everyone." Sure, you could use commas for the same effect; the sentence stands out for its use of semicolons.
I am far from the first to lament the blatant disregard for the semicolon. Slate magazine [http://www.slate.com/id/2194087/] lamented its demise while simultaneously hammering an additional nail into the mark's coffin by pointing out its primary modern usage as a means to express a wink in an Internet chat room. It seems the semicolon was fatally wounded by Samuel Morse and his code; nonetheless, it persists and prevails since so many dedicated writers are committed to its proper use. We may be called elitists; Kurt Vonnegut famously remarked that "All semicolons do is show that you've been to college." You are correct, Kurt; I have been to college. That is not, however, why I use the point-virgule with such gusto.
It is not enough to simply write concisely; one must put flavor into his work. Breaking out the thesaurus and committing never to use the same fifty-cent word twice is one thing. Writing like Hemingway and lampshading one's own writing style is another. Still, there is one method that simply cannot be beaten; use of the semicolon is exactly the sort of punch that like a vintage Mike Tyson left hook the reader never sees coming and by which he is knocked for a rhetorical and grammatical loop. That is the sort of writing that is remembered; let us celebrate the semicolon and all of its glory.
