Eats, Shoots & Leaves - Lynne Truss [35]
Popotakis had tried a cinema, a dance hall, baccarat, and miniature golf; now he had four pingpong tables. He had made good money, for the smart set of Jacksonburg were always hard put to get through the rainy season; the polyglot professional class had made it their rendezvous; even attachés from the legislations and younger members of the Jackson family had come there.
Evelyn Waugh, Scoop, 1938
The semicolon has been rightly called “a compliment from the writer to the reader”. And a mighty compliment it is, too. The sub-text of a semicolon is, “Now this is a hint. The elements of this sentence, although grammatically distinct, are actually elements of a single notion. I can make it plainer for you – but hey! You’re a reader! I don’t need to draw you a map!” By the same token, however, an overreliance on semicolons – to give an air of authorial intention to half-formed ideas thrown together on the page – is rather more of a compliment than some of us care to receive. The American writer Paul Robinson, in his essay “The Philosophy of Punctuation” (2002), says that “pretentious and over-active” semicolons have reached epidemic proportions in the world of academe, where they are used to gloss over imprecise thought. “They place two clauses in some kind of relation to one another but relieve the writer of saying exactly what that relation is.” Those are my italics, by the way – but it does sound as if Robinson is a bit worked up. “The semicolon has become so hateful to me,” he says in all seriousness, “that I feel almost morally compromised when I use it.”
There are times, however, when the semicolon is indispensable in another capacity: when it performs the duties of a kind of Special Policeman in the event of comma fights. If there is one lesson to be learned from this book, it is that there is never a dull moment in the world of punctuation. One minute the semicolon is gracefully joining sentences together in a flattering manner (and sullying Mr Robinson), and the next it is calling a bunch of brawling commas to attention.
Fares were offered to Corfu, the Greek island, Morocco, Elba, in the Mediterranean, and Paris. Margaret thought about it. She had been to Elba once and had found it dull, to Morocco, and found it too colourful.
There is no option for an upstanding semicolon in such circumstances other than to step in, blow a whistle and restore order.
Fares were offered to Corfu, the Greek island; Morocco; Elba, in the Mediterranean; and Paris. Margaret thought about it. She had been to Elba once and had found it dull; to Morocco, and found it too colourful.
That’s much clearer. And we have you to thank, Special Policeman Semicolon. There are two dangers, however, associated with this quell-the-rampant-comma use. One is that, having embarked on a series of clarifying semicolons, the writer loses interest, or forgets, and lapses into a comma (ho ho). The other danger is that weak-charactered writers will be encouraged to ignore the rule that only full sentences should be joined by the semicolon. Sometimes – and I’ve never admitted this to anyone before – I adopt a kind of stream-of-consciousness sentence structure; somewhat like Virginia Woolf; without full sentences; but it feels OK to do this; rather worrying.
Let us come swiftly to the last proper use of the semicolon. As we discovered in the comma chapter, it is wrong to write, “He woke up in his own bed, however, he felt fine.” Linking words such as “however”, “nevertheless”, “also”, “consequently” and “hence” require a semicolon – and, I have to say, this seems pretty self-evident to me. Much as I decry the old count-to-two system, there is an obvious take-a-breath thing going on here. When you read