An enjoyable read! I have often call myself a semi-colon fool when editing my own work but i am Gen X! What do you think about the phonetic respelling of words? I have seen 'interested' respelled as 'inch rested'. A part of me wants to draw the line there, but I agree with what you said that language is formed by its participation.
Also, I can't help but think 'inch rested', as slang, must have been intended for another meaning - and should - and it just got confused.
What happens when mistakes become norms due to popular use? Like 'irregardless'? :O
Thanks! It was fun to write! Irregardless is a great example of something we all face: Words tend to lose their heft over time, so we double down with intensifiers. It’s not just huge, now it’s huge-ass! The intensifier is a way to say really, very, extremely when the word itself doesn’t seem up to the job anymore. The extra (and semantically confusing) prefix on irregardless technically counts as a double negative, but when we hear it we recognize that the person is just trying to emphasize regardless.
This is a fascinating (and clever) essay. I quit wearing neckties 5 years ago; I will never stop using the semicolon! Also, I always use proper punctuation in my texts; it's my small contribution to the defense of Western Civilization.
One thing I've noticed reading Victorian novels: they often have a colon where a semicolon would be more appropriate. Or am I imagining things?
They definitely use the colon more than we do, and you’ll see it in places where we would normally use a semicolon. I remember reading someone say once that a colon says, “Pay attention to what comes next.” I started using it that way for stylistic reasons, and it’s served me pretty well. These days we mostly just use it to introduce lists, which seems to underutilize it.
I think that as English has moved towards a simpler, more direct and journalistic style over the past 125 years, it just presented fewer opportunities for prudent semi-colon use. You'll be pleased to know, however, that my son, now in his mid-twenties, has always been a big semi-colon fan. But I find that my students have no idea whatsoever how to use one. They seem to think that any random collection of words can be set off with a semi-colon.
Interestingly, as I read over this quickly for typos, I noticed that I instinctively spelled the word with a hyphen, semi-colon, whereas you had spelled it without. Some quick googling suggests that yours is the preferred version at this point, whereas I am, though not incorrect, antiquated. Which, upon reflection, ought to have been predictable.
It is pretty common to collapse compounds. Hyphens are a great example of drift. We actually use them when we shouldn’t—for instance, to indicate range, such as 5-7; that ought to be an en dash, like so: 5–7. And we also increasingly drop them when we might use them—in the case of collapsed compounds (it’s email now, not e-mail) and sometimes even when we don’t collapse the compound.
Ah, for me it is still e-mail. And will remain so.
Interesting comment on the en-dash in something like a range. I have to admit that I don't really believe in en-dashes, or even, in a sense, in em-dashes. I learned to type on a typewriter (you too perhaps? we can't be that far apart in age, I don't think), and as far as I'm concerned I've got two of these punctuation varieties at my disposal: - and --.
But though content to stand athwart linguistic and punctuational history yelling "Stop," I am not entirely antiquated, because I'm willing to end my comment with a ; ) .
My father-in-law grumbles about "language in the hands of the masses," oftentimes with a wink. But he's right: It's the masses that inexorably change the language down to the little jots and tittles we all use (or not).
That comma that Thos. Jefferson evidently left out of the Declaration of Independence introduced ambiguity that diminished the document whose stated purpose was to explain. But we still got the main point. What I feel sorrier about-though-is the dearth of en dashes.
I’ve heard slang sometimes attributed to what were called fringe or marginal populations, those living at or below the poverty line and thus sometimes needing to resort to less than legal means to survive. Cockney rhyming slang enabled speakers to exchange important information at critical moments without letting others present know what was being said. That’s in addition to the “I’m one of us and so are you” function of inclusion. So is anyone monitoring AI and Chat etc for the emergence of slang reflecting similar awareness?
Cockney rhyming slang is amazing! How could anyone follow it? Incredible. I don’t know about AI/Chat thing, but we’ll know we’ve crossed a threshold if the AIs develop their own slang that we can’t follow.
I use semicolons quite a lot, but in fairly old fashioned way: to link two closely related sentences. I have just gone through the page proofs of Social Thoughts from the Ruins: Quixote's Dinner Party, coming out later this summer. It's a book about associations, thinking, conversation -- lots of links and bounds. So I used lots of commas, mostly. But the page proofs came back with semi-colons EVERYWHERE. So maybe a revival is under way.
Save the semicolon! "Em dashes are now viewed as telltale signs of AI-generated writing." And you know why? I've always been fond of them. And Google AI's hoovered up five of my novels from pirate book sites—to teach them how to write. Never asked permission—never paid me a nickel. Watch... they'll go after alliteration next. Got some in my books... along with ellipses. I always liked me a little alliteration.
An enjoyable read! I have often call myself a semi-colon fool when editing my own work but i am Gen X! What do you think about the phonetic respelling of words? I have seen 'interested' respelled as 'inch rested'. A part of me wants to draw the line there, but I agree with what you said that language is formed by its participation.
Also, I can't help but think 'inch rested', as slang, must have been intended for another meaning - and should - and it just got confused.
What happens when mistakes become norms due to popular use? Like 'irregardless'? :O
Thanks! It was fun to write! Irregardless is a great example of something we all face: Words tend to lose their heft over time, so we double down with intensifiers. It’s not just huge, now it’s huge-ass! The intensifier is a way to say really, very, extremely when the word itself doesn’t seem up to the job anymore. The extra (and semantically confusing) prefix on irregardless technically counts as a double negative, but when we hear it we recognize that the person is just trying to emphasize regardless.
Like using "decimated" to mean "obliterated", when it actually means "decreased by 10%".
This is a fascinating (and clever) essay. I quit wearing neckties 5 years ago; I will never stop using the semicolon! Also, I always use proper punctuation in my texts; it's my small contribution to the defense of Western Civilization.
One thing I've noticed reading Victorian novels: they often have a colon where a semicolon would be more appropriate. Or am I imagining things?
They definitely use the colon more than we do, and you’ll see it in places where we would normally use a semicolon. I remember reading someone say once that a colon says, “Pay attention to what comes next.” I started using it that way for stylistic reasons, and it’s served me pretty well. These days we mostly just use it to introduce lists, which seems to underutilize it.
I have the interrobang programmed on all of my electronic devices.
‽ ✌🏼
You are a hero of the species!
I think that as English has moved towards a simpler, more direct and journalistic style over the past 125 years, it just presented fewer opportunities for prudent semi-colon use. You'll be pleased to know, however, that my son, now in his mid-twenties, has always been a big semi-colon fan. But I find that my students have no idea whatsoever how to use one. They seem to think that any random collection of words can be set off with a semi-colon.
Interestingly, as I read over this quickly for typos, I noticed that I instinctively spelled the word with a hyphen, semi-colon, whereas you had spelled it without. Some quick googling suggests that yours is the preferred version at this point, whereas I am, though not incorrect, antiquated. Which, upon reflection, ought to have been predictable.
It is pretty common to collapse compounds. Hyphens are a great example of drift. We actually use them when we shouldn’t—for instance, to indicate range, such as 5-7; that ought to be an en dash, like so: 5–7. And we also increasingly drop them when we might use them—in the case of collapsed compounds (it’s email now, not e-mail) and sometimes even when we don’t collapse the compound.
Ah, for me it is still e-mail. And will remain so.
Interesting comment on the en-dash in something like a range. I have to admit that I don't really believe in en-dashes, or even, in a sense, in em-dashes. I learned to type on a typewriter (you too perhaps? we can't be that far apart in age, I don't think), and as far as I'm concerned I've got two of these punctuation varieties at my disposal: - and --.
But though content to stand athwart linguistic and punctuational history yelling "Stop," I am not entirely antiquated, because I'm willing to end my comment with a ; ) .
I didn’t learn on a typewriter, but almost: an amber-screen PC DOS machine with a dot-matrix printer.
Ah... those were the days!
Oh, no--it's the end of the world as we know it!!!!!
I suspect we’ll muddle through, though probably only barely!
My father-in-law grumbles about "language in the hands of the masses," oftentimes with a wink. But he's right: It's the masses that inexorably change the language down to the little jots and tittles we all use (or not).
The interrobang!? Nice. I never knew that was a thing. But the essay is on the semicolon; so nevermind.
Yes! There was an effort to make it a bigger thing in the middle 20th century, but it never took off.
That comma that Thos. Jefferson evidently left out of the Declaration of Independence introduced ambiguity that diminished the document whose stated purpose was to explain. But we still got the main point. What I feel sorrier about-though-is the dearth of en dashes.
I hear you. I flinch whenever I see someone use a hyphen when they should use an en dash.
I’ve heard slang sometimes attributed to what were called fringe or marginal populations, those living at or below the poverty line and thus sometimes needing to resort to less than legal means to survive. Cockney rhyming slang enabled speakers to exchange important information at critical moments without letting others present know what was being said. That’s in addition to the “I’m one of us and so are you” function of inclusion. So is anyone monitoring AI and Chat etc for the emergence of slang reflecting similar awareness?
Cockney rhyming slang is amazing! How could anyone follow it? Incredible. I don’t know about AI/Chat thing, but we’ll know we’ve crossed a threshold if the AIs develop their own slang that we can’t follow.
I may need to dig through my William Gibson novels to see if he had any ideas along those lines
Joel,
I use semicolons quite a lot, but in fairly old fashioned way: to link two closely related sentences. I have just gone through the page proofs of Social Thoughts from the Ruins: Quixote's Dinner Party, coming out later this summer. It's a book about associations, thinking, conversation -- lots of links and bounds. So I used lots of commas, mostly. But the page proofs came back with semi-colons EVERYWHERE. So maybe a revival is under way.
Save the semicolon! "Em dashes are now viewed as telltale signs of AI-generated writing." And you know why? I've always been fond of them. And Google AI's hoovered up five of my novels from pirate book sites—to teach them how to write. Never asked permission—never paid me a nickel. Watch... they'll go after alliteration next. Got some in my books... along with ellipses. I always liked me a little alliteration.
Good one, Joel.