Celebrating the Semicolon

This is a wonderful story. I don't know which is cuter, that the NY Times would write an elated story about a punctuation mark, or that they had to append a correction after missing a comma in "Eats, Shoots & Leaves". But they are absolutely right. Semicolon is an indicator of certain "depth" in thinking about writing. One of the first comments I got for my writing from my PhD supervisor was that I should learn to use it. Not for the depth of it, or even style, but there were a number of points where I should have used it instead of the period or something else. Folded ends of toilet rolls in hotels, magnetic power chords in Macs, semicolons separating phrases. Signs of civilization.

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