Comments on: The Steel diaries

By: mike

mike — Mon, 11 Dec 2006 03:04:00 +0000

ohhhh, eva lays it down! take that literati.

By: eva

eva — Sat, 09 Dec 2006 04:48:00 +0000

I thought a semicolon was part of the digestive system. E

By: ian

ian — Fri, 08 Dec 2006 14:46:00 +0000

The Penguin Guide to Punctuation says:

The semi-colon (;) has only one major use. It is used to join two complete sentences into a single written sentence when all of the following conditions are met:

1. The two sentences are felt to be too closely related to be separated by a full stop;

2. There is no connecting word which would require a comma, such as 'and' or 'but';

3. The special conditions requiring a colon are absent.

Here is a famous example:
'It was the best of times; it was the worst of times.'

A semi colon can always, in principle, be replaced by either a full stop (yielding two seprate sentences) or by the word 'and'."

--

Thanks Penguin. There is also a semi-colon usage for lists, which is also happens to be demonstrated above.

By: mike

mike — Fri, 08 Dec 2006 06:03:00 +0000

the funny part is that one of my many rent jobs these days is teaching other people how to use semicolons; am i doing something wrong?

By: Mark

Mark — Wed, 06 Dec 2006 23:02:00 +0000

I believe this post is going to lead Mark to give Mike an iaugeration on correct semi-colon usage.

By: Ian

Ian — Wed, 06 Dec 2006 19:51:00 +0000

Then maybe this blog entry could be the inaugural prologue to Toronto’s inaugural premier of Steel. I think we’ve got something here.

By: Anonymous

Anonymous — Wed, 06 Dec 2006 19:40:00 +0000

I suggest that there be more use of the word "inaugural". We were all hooked the first time it was used. Oh wait- I mean it's inaugural use.

Meredith