Slate’s Paul Collins has an excellent piece on the semicolon–well worth reading. I take especial interest, in part, because the Cathy Lanier thesis mentioned elsewhere on this blog (and most likely again and again) has some of the most egregious misuse of the semicolon I’ve ever read anywhere. Her use of semicolons, commas and dashes borders on the interchangeable, such that it’s hard to imagine her professors at the Naval Postgraduate School could miss one of the few real shortcomings of an otherwise essential text. I am further surprised to even have cause for recommending anything by Slate outside of the Hitchens column.
Jun21
