Comment by beezlebroxxxxxx | Hacker News Reader

Comment by beezlebroxxxxxx | Hacker News Reader

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beezlebroxxxxxx

Once you write enough you realize most of these all or nothing pronouncements on grammar and punctuation are more like personal vendettas and affectations. Semicolons should always be in your toolbelt; they can elevate a sentence's elegance and grace, improve and control the rhythm and clarity, and really improve readability.

Some people think all non-fiction writing has to abide by technical writing standards, but that's hogwash and pointless hardheadedness once you actually know how to write and use complex sentences to capture complex ideas well.

Ward Farnsworth says it well:

> A lapse from a supposed rule of style isn't an offense against nature. It's just a choice with consequences, and sometimes you want the consequences.

> Semicolons should always be in your toolbelt; they can elevate a sentence's elegance and grace, improve and control the rhythm and clarity, and really improve readability.

You are a member of an ever-smaller group of people who feel that way. https://unherd.com/newsroom/the-melancholy-decline-of-the-se...

> In 2017, author Ben Blatt discovered that semicolon use dropped by about 70% from 1800 to 2000. The ghosts of several authors are now rejoicing. Writers like George Orwell, who called semicolons “an unnecessary stop”. Or Edgar Allan Poe, who preferred the dash. Or Kurt Vonnegut, who famously advised against their use, saying “All they do is show you’ve been to college.” The symbol is facing the same melancholy fate as the dodo, the dinosaur, and the Soviet Union. Extinction.

Maybe "endangerment" is more fair, given that it's still massively popular compared to, say, the interrobang.

Also note that two of the three authors cited are known for their bare-bones, economical prose styles; not exactly a cross-section of the literary world. (Poe is debatable--he was probably economical for a 19th century romantic, but not in absolute terms.)

This is to our disadvantage. Semicolons are useful because they allow for the long, patient, elaboration of complex ideas in a single sentence. In fiction, in particular, they can also function akin to a jumpcut in cinema, or like montage editing. Many of the incredible scenes in a book like Flaubert's Mme Bovary get their feel from the way he slams units of prose together with semicolons rather than the trudge of periods and short sentences. The same is true of Proust, or Nabokov, or Hemingway, who was way more profligate with semicolons than the meme-ish idea of his prose which has become popular (he was mocked for his use of them in The Sun Also Rises for example).

Unfortunate, really. Everything now is supposed to be distilled into these short and clippy sentences and paragraphs. Like newspaper prose. Modern prose fiction is often so anodyne and lifeless; a semicolon, with the freedom to smash things together in fun ways, would do most some good.

> Semicolons should always be in your toolbelt; they can elevate a sentence's elegance and grace, improve and control the rhythm and clarity, and really improve readability.

They can, but not all prose needs to rely on them. Indeed, the quoted semicolon could easily be swapped for a period with no loss. In such a case it serves more as ornamentation than semantics.

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