A sign on the NYC subway asking patrons to throw away their newspapers inspired a New York Times article about the underused form of punctuation. The sign read, "Please put it in a trash can; that's good news for everyone."
Sam Roberts wrote that the semicolon is so rare because writers don't know how to use it. It, for the record, should be used to join two clauses that might otherwise be separated by a period.
The Times article, which is currently the number three most e-mailed, includes a quote by novelist Kurt Vonnegut: "When Hemingway killed himself he put a period at the end of his life. Old age is more like a semicolon."
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment