The semicolon has always been the neglected underdog of punctuation; I try to sneak one in wherever I think I can get away with it.
Ozarkian · 1d ago
I would like to disagree with you; however, your sentiment is based on sound grammar.
vonnik · 1d ago
The crazy thing about semicolons is that they were once common in books intended for young adults/middle readers. See E. Nesbit and co. When I read the childrens' authors of early 20C Britain, I often think their writing is more demanding that books marketed to today's adults.
southernplaces7 · 1d ago
Good riddance. I'll go with what Vonnegut said on them.
“Here is a lesson in creative writing. First rule: Do not use semicolons. They are transvestite hermaphrodites representing absolutely nothing. All they do is show you've been to college.”
phoe-krk · 2d ago
It's certainly a crisis in the Lisp world; everyone seems to be writing fewer comments.
lemonwaterlime · 2d ago
Outside of coding, I seldom use semicolons; however, they do have their uses in certain cases—when there are two complete thoughts in the sentence.
"I have great respect for the semicolon; it is a mighty handy little fellow."
— Abraham Lincoln
DaSHacka · 1d ago
I'm more curious about the usage of em/en dash, most people in my life had no idea it existed.
I myself only discovered them for the first time when reading a punctuation site to ensure I was using semicolons grammatically correctly.
dx4100 · 1d ago
I've been using double hyphens (which auto-corrects to emdash now) for as long as I can remember. Now that it's a marker of AI, I find myself removing it whenever I reply to comments.
nunez · 1d ago
I always used three hyphens in place of the emdash; easier to type.
saurik · 1d ago
While I've seen it in tooling like markdown--with two being an endash--that's very very wide... I am very sure the convention has always been to use two hyphens for an mdash (which is even easier to type! ;P).
DaSHacka · 1d ago
Some of my acquaintances were doing the same, but unintentionally.
I had also thought news articles and the like were using regular hyphens that were extended due to some weird font.
pfdietz · 2d ago
Commas, on the, other hand, are turning up, everywhere.
Periods too. Periods and commas are being used incorrectly in place of semicolons, ellipses, and em dashes.
treetalker · 1d ago
Netizens frequently misuse question marks in place of periods to indicate surprise?
And what even do they use even after interrogatories for? What even is that?
dowager_dan99 · 1d ago
still beats people? who talk? like this?
dx4100 · 1d ago
I've seen people use them as a way to replace pauses in speech. I see it more with boomers / Gen-X.
example:
he isn't wrong... why do you think that ... it's a good thing
adverbly · 2d ago
Personally I have been using em dash(or some other kind of dash) for everything these days.
I know it's probably wrong, but I got the feeling that people won't roast me over a fire if I use it incorrectly.
ydlr · 2d ago
Ms Dickinson, is that you?
dx4100 · 1d ago
Well, now that AI makes heavy use of it, I've been using it less. AI LOVES it.
dusted · 2d ago
I think they forgot to include *.js *.ts *.c *.cpp *.java
sandra_vu · 2d ago
with where we are heading, we might see the 90% drop in the use of –
Geste · 1d ago
So I guess we are doing our part here ? Trying to sneak one semicolon for the count ?
I'm not sure even when to even use them correctly.
They always fall flat or make sound pretentious; both of which I try to avoid.
nunez · 1d ago
The semicolon was always a confusing symbol; it makes even less sense in typical text-style conversations on phones. you can use a period in its place most of the time.
dowager_dan99 · 1d ago
I will miss the semicolon, but I'm more concerned about punctuation in general. If I punctuate a text message my teenage daughter will respond "are you mad at me"
ryao · 1d ago
Whenever someone misuses the word mad, I think of this:
It's hard af to type on screen keyboards, especially with increasingly-wrong autocorrect keyboards.
BeFlatXIII · 1d ago
I deliberately use punctuation to flex and intimidate others. Only those undaunted by the weird glyphs are worthy of my respect.
eimrine · 2d ago
I would like to say this about colons.
Semicolons means the sentence is too hard, sometimes it will look easier with parentheses.
HKH2 · 2d ago
Comma splices are not an improvement.
eimrine · 6h ago
Well, in Russian language it is typical to use a lot of commas, because we don't have the requirement of queuing Subject + Verb as analytical languages do.
“Here is a lesson in creative writing. First rule: Do not use semicolons. They are transvestite hermaphrodites representing absolutely nothing. All they do is show you've been to college.”
I myself only discovered them for the first time when reading a punctuation site to ensure I was using semicolons grammatically correctly.
I had also thought news articles and the like were using regular hyphens that were extended due to some weird font.
https://theonion.com/commas-turning-up-everywhere-1819569774...
And what even do they use even after interrogatories for? What even is that?
example:
he isn't wrong... why do you think that ... it's a good thing
I know it's probably wrong, but I got the feeling that people won't roast me over a fire if I use it incorrectly.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3Ao4WTcMtY8