The Semicolon; Just Don’t
Rid your writing of this useless punctuation
Look, in a quarter century of college teaching, I have rarely seen students use a semicolon correctly. And when they have tried, they would botch the job so spectacularly. I think about year 5, I started to say to them — just don’t.
I was glad that a famous writer could back up my lifelong intuitions about the semicolon. Kurt Vonnegut said, “Do not use semicolons. They are transvestite hermaphrodites representing absolutely nothing. All they do is show you’ve been to college.” So it goes.
Okay, so Mr. Vonnegut must be taken to the woodshed for yoking the dreaded semicolon together with transvestite hermaphrodites, who have done absolutely nothing to attract such animosity. But he does have a point about semicolons.
College degrees, being what they are today, must be heralded by something for their relative lack of worth. Why not use a semicolon to announce your degree: B.S.; Deforestation and Global Climate Piracy. I’ve seen the movie Idiocracy and understand the future we face as a nation; brag now before it’s too late.
Certainly some people still care for the semicolon, though I don’t. In The Writing Cooperative, Matt Cowan wrote “How (and How Not) to Use Semicolons.” In addition, there is a new book out about semicolons…
