Colons & semi colons.

woops

is not like other people
just take the cormac mccarthy approach and never use either, and fuck off quotation marks for speech as well
 

Mr. Tea

Let's Talk About Ceps
Someone famous said "semicolons are a way of showing that you've been to university".

Can't remember who it was.

That's my contribution to the thread.
 
it only matters when you do a list within a sentence with a clause I think. Generally unimportant and quite ugly tbh
 
if I had to explain it I’d say commas do several jobs but when they’re doing the job separating items in a list it means they can’t do their job of demarcation outside of the list so we need something else

?
 

Leo

Well-known member
many sentences with semi-colons could -- and probably should -- be written as two sentences.
 

jenks

thread death
Hmmmm... I spend time teaching and re-teaching semi colons. The colon/semi colon list is useful but lists can be made with commas if not introduced by a colon. Semi colons in place of conjunctions are going out of fashion, I think. Generally, punctuation is being reduced to commas, full stops and a variety of dashes. Don’t even bother with apostrophes, we’re probably watching their slow death daily.
 

IdleRich

IdleRich
Semi-colon is to separate two (or more) clauses in a sentence. But yeah often could start a new sentence or use a hyphen. Colon is for lists etc
 
Proper grammar is for cunts. What does thinking about this stuff do for anyone nothing exactly move on then
 
since dissensus is inverted snobs we obv all think grammar Nazis are cunts don’t we? thinking about grammar as rules shackles expression, it’s something to judge people With. Once you get to grips with a new language, your bearings, we don’t need to think about grammar at all in terms of right and wrong, it’s just a useful structure, some innate pattern that mostly makes sense
 

sufi

lala
chances are whoever reads yr memo also won't know; they may well be impressed at your punctuational dexterity whether you get it right or not.
 
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sufi

lala
i'd have thought these days the semi-colon's use for punctuating is eclipsed by the winky emoji
 

Mr. Tea

Let's Talk About Ceps
since dissensus is inverted snobs we obv all think grammar Nazis are cunts don’t we? thinking about grammar as rules shackles expression, it’s something to judge people With. Once you get to grips with a new language, your bearings, we don’t need to think about grammar at all in terms of right and wrong, it’s just a useful structure, some innate pattern that mostly makes sense
I'm ambivalent about it. Generally I don't mind too much if it's a 'natural' error or simple laziness. So saying "Why don't you and me go to the pub?" is technically wrong, but it's not ugly, because it's a normal, natural sentence. But "It's high time for a pub trip for you and I" is like nails being dragged down a blackboard. I just cannot stand hypercorrection. Really hate it.

Similarly, "These are Toms shoes" - again, technically wrong, but doesn't bother me. The omission of something that should be there is no big deal.

But "These are Tom's shoe's" - when there's something there that shouldn't be there - aargh, hate it.
 
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