Practicing an art, no matter how well or badly, is a way to make your soul grow, for heaven’s sake. Sing in the shower. Dance to the radio. Tell stories. Write a poem to a friend, even a lousy poem. Do it as well as you possibly can. You will get an enormous reward. You will have created something.That came to my attention this morning because it was the answer to an old Wall Street Journal acrostic I just did. I had the book in my Kindle, so I looked it up. It ends a half-page bit at "location 222" that appears under the heading "Here is a lesson in creative writing."
There's more to that quote. This is the lead-in:
If you want to really hurt your parents, and you don’t have the nerve to be gay, the least you can do is go into the arts. I’m not kidding. The arts are not a way to make a living. They are a very human way of making life more bearable.
But the first thing under that heading is:
First rule: Do not use semicolons. They are transvestite hermaphrodites representing absolutely nothing. All they do is show you’ve been to college.
It's considered bad form these days to be averse to sexuality that's not manifested as clearly masculine or clearly feminine. And "transvestite" and "hermaphrodite" are disfavored and inappropriately pejorative. Nowadays, it's unseemly to pressure anyone to get into one camp or the other. You can be "nonbinary." That's not "nothing." So the Vonnegut rule against semicolons is nullified. Don't disrespect the semicolon because it's neither a period nor a comma. Celebrate the semicolon!
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65 comments:
I use the semi-colon when I am listing groups of things while listing the individuals in each group. I don't know if that is grammatically correct or not, but it is pretty much the only time I will use one inside a sentence. I also use them to denote the end of a bullet points- again not clear if one is needed.
If you want to really hurt your parents...
transvestite hermaphrodites ....
All they do is show you’ve been to college.
So, Serious Questions. Of the teenaged girls with sudden onset gender dysphoria...
How many of them have parents that HAVEN'T been to college?
How many of them have parents that are "hurt" by their gender transitioning?
How many of them are doing it, because they don't like periods?
{i can't think of a question, that disses commas; even though, i'd like to }
I never use the semicolon. It’s the last resort. You can get semicolon cancer. If it’s used sexually, you can get this chronic semicolitis that has to be treated over time. And it’s just in the discharge and the nasty appearance and it doesn’t smell like vagina.
Write carefully. Tomorrow the semicolon may decide to become a colon and what you wrote will no longer make sense.
It's also a good way to not cheat your devoted readers.
When I spend good money on a book, I want the entire damned colon...
Just because the simile is now taboo, that doesn't mean the underlying principle no longer applies. I used to use semicolons to try to create some kind of hierarchical structure. It's been very liberating for me to just use commas. Turns out my complex sentences read just fine that way. And if they don't, that's a sign I need to break them up into simpler sentences, not add more complex punctuation. Can I call semicolons the useless mouths of the punctuation world, or is that too offensive?
If you're writing fantasy fiction to be consumed by the masses like Kurt did, semicolons might indeed get in the way. But if you're writing to be precisely understood like, for instance, I generally do, semicolons are indispensable.
Semicolons are good for short, related sentences that would have their relationship diminished by a period. My first choice is the comma (I've always resisted the comma splice as a fake rule), but if it would technically be a run on sentence with a comma, then I use a semicolon instead.
You can't assume which camp a particular punctuation mark is in just because it has a period!
One sentence, three semicolons, makes grammar Nazis cry. But if you work at it, you can come to read it and it is sublime in comparison to what we are familiar with in modern writing. Ran it through one of those online grade level rating apps and it came out as Grade 100. While the topic is easily summarized, learning to read complex writing such as this is how you come to discipline your intellect and regulate your emotions on your journey to become educated.
"But no one, I think, has ever called attention to the enormous differences in living, in business, in political temper between the days (which practically lasted until the last century) when a citizen, a merchant, an employer of labor, or a laboring man, still more a corporation or association and lastly, a man even in his most intimate relations, the husband and the father, well knew the law as familiar law, a law with which he had grown up, and to which he had adapted his life, his marriage, the education of his children, his business career and his entrance into public life -- and these days of to-day, when all those doing business under a corporate firm primarily, but also those doing business at all; all owners of property, all employers of labor, all bankers or manufacturers or consumers; all citizens, in their gravest and their least actions, also must look into their newspapers every morning to make sure that the whole law of life has not been changed for them by a statute passed overnight; when not only no lawyer may maintain an office without the most recent day-by-day bulletins on legislation, but may not advise on the simplest proposition of marriage or divorce, of a wife's share in a husband's property, of her freedom of contract, without sending not only to his own State legislature, but for the most recent statute of any other State which may have a bearing on the situation."
--Popular Law-making: A Study of the Origin, History, and Present Tendencies of Law-making by Statute, Frederic J. Stimson (1910)
It's like the demidudette of grammar.
;-)
Yoking "transvestite" and "hermaphrodite" together just proves you're ready for the writers workshop.
I wonder what KV would say about converting colons to semi-cunts?
May I suggest an edit to the post? The last two sentences should be:
"[d]on't disrespect the semicolon because it's neither a period nor a comma; celebrate the semicolon!"
This leaves me hanging; in the middle of the air; lost between, say, a light brush of a comma and the hard slug of a period; there is in that space a true intermediate value; there is unique meaning to the semi-colon.
And there we go, dragging a damned hyphen into the discussion.
Don't take writing advice from Vonnegut.
I like semicolons and end up using them a lot. Perhaps that makes me a bad person; or a bad writer.
Kurt Vonnegut seemed really cool when I was 12. His big idea always was that the Japanese (or was it Chinese) would make themselves really, really tiny and take over the world because they wouldn't need so many resources to survive.
Is that racist? If so, again whom?
How long before we get pronouns telling us what their pronouns are?
I love the semicolon. I use it a lot. I don't know if I'm using it correctly. I really don't care.
Blogger Ignorance is Bliss said...
You can't assume which camp a particular punctuation mark is in just because it has a period
Ah…pure Bliss!
… and if I am using it incorrectly, what was it that Kamala Harris said? You can not deny my truth of the semicolon.
garner;
Men in shorts; garner attention.
When I found out how much it would cost, I asked my doctor if we couldn’t just do a semicolonoscopy. He said, “No. There’d be too much risk you might slip into a comma. Period.”
;
the null statement.
Meade; will you be here all week?
“ "[d]on't disrespect the semicolon because it's neither a period nor a comma; celebrate the semicolon!"”
I considered that when I wrote the post. Rejected it.
I can't see the point in throwing away any tool that can be used to create variety in your sentence construction, but if you want to write like Vonnegut, by all means, ditch the semicolon; If you want to write like Fitzgerald, don't.
"I considered that when I wrote the post. Rejected it."
It's subtle, but it does shows the power of the semicolon, that it can moderate tone.
"I love the semicolon. I use it a lot. I don't know if I'm using it correctly; I really don't care."
That would be my two cents, and I think the semicolon works great there.
I have a strong aversion to semi-colons myself, but there's one context where they're necessary: if you're listing a bunch of things (e.g. book titles), some of which have commas in them, you need to separate them with semi-colons for clarity.
Example: "Excellent modern novels set in Ancient Rome include: Memoirs of Hadrian; Marius, the Epicurean; I, Claudius." Perfectly clear. If all the separators after the colon were commas, it would look like four or five titles, but it's only three. A reader might realize that "Marius" and "the Epicurean" are not different books, because "the" would be capitalized if it were the first word of a title. But there's no way to tell whether "I" and "Claudius" are one book or two without semi-colons. (You think "I" couldn't be a title? Pynchon wrote one called "V.". Of course, "I" as a title could mean "Me", or could be a Roman "One" - maybe a book about Caesar's First Legion?)
If all the titles are italicized, the commas inside the book titles would also be italicized, while the commas between titles would not, but asking a reader to distinguish italicized from non-italicized commas is asking way too much.
Don't disrespect the semicolon because it's neither a period nor a comma.
It's on a spectrum...the colonic spectrum...a beautiful thing, like the rainbow you sometimes see when availing yourself of the therapeutic benefits of a powerful cleanse on bright sunny day.
It's considered bad form these days to be averse to sexuality that's not manifested as clearly masculine or clearly feminine.
It's considered bad form these days to be averse to sexuality that's not manifested as clearly masculine or clearly feminine by the worst examples of Homo sapiens in 300,000 years of evolution.
FIFY
Could it be something in the water? General Ripper may have been on to something.
Yesterday, Dr. Marci Bowers: "I never use the colon. It’s the last resort. You can get colon cancer. If it’s used sexually, you can get this chronic colitis that has to be treated over time. And it’s just in the discharge and the nasty appearance and it doesn’t smell like vagina."
Today, Kurt Vonnegut: "Do not use semicolons. They are transvestite hermaphrodites representing absolutely nothing."
Tomorrow?
Original Mike said...
Meade; will you be here all week?
If you want me to; YES!
There’d be too much risk you might slip into a comma. Period.
I'm commatose with laughter.
(Crikeys! I've typed a lame pun using my favorite Apple A1048 Bluetooth keyboard! It was pristinely innocent of such low comedy until now. Damn!)
Meade @ 3:35: threadwinner.
*smoking with envy at the skill*
You'd think hermaphrodites would be gender fluid.
Hermaphrodites stand on the floor and hermaphrotites hang from the ceiling.
I once worked with a guy that suggested we use the colon as the brown number generator. He submitted a paper to some journal proposing Brown Number Theory.
He was not published.
#cancelkurtvonnegutyesweknowhesalreadydeadbutstill
I'm flum moxed by the semi colon.
Here’s what I taught my writing class students about punctuation:
1. Exclamation marks are for girls and women.
2. The most commonly used punctuation mark in English is also the largest key on the keyboard: the space. And it is punctuation.
3. Ellipses are cool and have multiple uses.
4. Semicolons make you look smart … and obnoxious.
5. Don’t use all-caps.
6. Dashes are cool, like ellipses.
7. Don’t use a hyphen when a dash is called for.
8. Don’t use commas if they don’t help clarify anything.
9. Use white space … it’s friendly.
10. The apostrophe is dying a long, slow death.
Well, tbh I don’t know if I exactly taught these things but they came through.
"4. Semicolons make you look smart … and obnoxious."
Don't use semicolons if you want to appeal to morons, which is KV's take too.
Punctuation in writing is like spice in cooking: necessary for the full richness of the meal, but easy to overdo.
All the marks have their places. The apostrophe is missused awfully, and almost everyone here (self included) use "it's" as a possessive as a contraction, and/or vice versa.
It's, He's, She's (It is, He is, She is) vs. Its, His, Hers.
As for quoting book titles: librarians dispense with the initial A, An, and The.
Quotation marks are tricky too, for some people. Studs Turkel's book '"The Good War"' used to garner criticism because everyone knows there's no such thing as a good war!
I was reminded to reread "Sirens of Titan" by a recent post here, and don't care what anyone thinks of semicolons; they serve a purpose.
10. The apostrophe's dyin' a long, slow 'death'. Not On My Watch!! Ain't gonna Happen!
I figured LGBTQIA2S+ needed punctuation.
Ha ha, years ago Ann commented critically on my fondness for the semicolon; she had a point. But I had no idea I was part of a progressive movement!
Oh, horsepucky, all of you. I love semicolons; I use them constantly. As, for instance, in the last sentence. They are the only way I know to suggest that two statements are in relation to one another without ham-handedly spelling it out. As such, they make it easier to read, not harder.
As for KV's "they show you've been to college," my writing was replete with semicolons in fifth grade (also dashes and parentheses). I've tapered back a bit.
"1. Exclamation marks are for girls and women."
In other words, they are wonderful.
The colon is the rank above semicolon. "I have two things to say: blablaA; blablaA1, blablaA2; BlablaB; blablaB1, blablaB2." A hierarchy.
'In other words, they are wonderful.'
Girls are made of sugar and spice and everything nice, he exclaimed...
I respect and admire Kurt Vonnegut, but he is not in charge of punctuation.
You'll get more useful information from George Orwell's "Politics and the English Language" than from anything Vonnegut has to say. This is also true of Mark Twain's "Fenimore Cooper's Literary Offenses" and Churchill's "Scaffolding of Rhetoric", or his famous "Brevity" memo.
“The colon is the rank above semicolon. "I have two things to say: blablaA; blablaA1, blablaA2; BlablaB; blablaB1, blablaB2." A hierarchy”
If you see a semicolon in my writing, scan backwards for the preceding colon to designate the list I am providing. I sometimes have wished that I could tie sentences together with semicolons, but really have never been able to. That is part of why I majored in math, and not creative writing – I have no talent for the latter.
The semi-colon is to the colon as the small intestine is to the large intestine: a place to make up sh*t.
The semicolon connects two independent clauses. You could just use a period between the two independent clauses, but if the independent clauses are related to each other a semicolon is a good way to link them in the reader's mind.
It is incumbent upon the writer, though, to make sure the two independent clauses actually are related to each other in such a way that the semicolon is preferable to the period to achieve comprehension by the reader.
I'd rather people would celebrate my dangling participle.
Vonnegut was a great one for using the asterick, as I recall. He used it as a symbol for designating an asshole, which it resembles.
@mikee reminds us of KV's sketches. IIRC he even did a portrait if his asshole, and it did look like an assterick.
@JAORE, have you done an image search for "dangling participle"?
I like semicolons. Too many teachers complain about students putting in commas rather than periods, and the semicolon gets rid of the problem. I even like colons. I'm referring to the punctuation mark, but so long as my own colon treats me right I will respect it.
So many insults down through history are going to have to be reconsidered or abandoned now that being nonbinary isn't a bad thing anymore. I kind of hope it stays that way and we aren't faced with a situation where we have to toughen up and get back to older ways. But alas, history suggests otherwise.
First rule: Do not use semicolons. They are transvestite hermaphrodites representing absolutely nothing. All they do is show you’ve been to college.
------------
are they then phrodihermites after trans-ing?
The semicolon subtly binds the second idea to the first, either to emphasize it distaff, or to expand on or reign it in. It’s a lovely thing. But it can be misused; it can be overused. It doesn’t work so well in fiction based on dialogue: we don’t speak in semicolon very often.
I don’t know anything about art; but I can feel when I need a semicolon.
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