Tuesday, February 19, 2008
A semicolon goes uptown

The sometimes baffling piece of punctuation turns up in the New York subways, drawing praise from Lynne Truss and others. The story about this usage is, curiously enough, doing well on the "most popular" lists at The New York Times, defeating Paul Krugman and David Brooks.

UPDATE: The blog Notes from the Copy Editor points us to some solid advice on how to use the semicolon.
 
posted by Andy Bechtel at 9:05 AM | Permalink |


4 Comments:


  • At 1:13 PM, Anonymous Anonymous

    Did you see the correction at the bottom of the NY Times article? Funny...ironic...

     

  • At 1:26 PM, Blogger Dan

    I prefer to go by either Notes from the Copy Editor or Language is the People's (Our Bold Hero is more of a pseudonym), but in any case thanks for the link.

     

  • At 1:46 PM, Blogger Andy Bechtel

    Thanks, Dan. I corrected the post.

    I enjoy your blog.

     

  • At 12:40 PM, Anonymous Anonymous

    The poor, misunderstood, much ignored semicolon. He's like that kid in high school who was never tardy, whom teachers always called by someone else's name, and who couldn't get elected class president to save his life but who served as an excellent treasurer three years in a row. I'm glad to see the semicolon is getting his day in the sun, and I silently rejoiced when I noticed the story on the NYT list of most-e-mailed stories. Then again, I'm a bit of a semicolon junkie. I have a weakness for the Johnny-on-the-spot type.

    Great blog, by the way.

     
Post a Comment ~ back home