The pause that refreshes
Last week, the online magazine Slate ran a piece about the disappearance of the certain punctuation from present-day writing that asked, “Has modern life killed the semicolon?“ As its author Paul Collins noted, “The semicolon allows woozy clauses to lean on each other like drunks for support.” True enough, I thought to myself, which I why I only use them once in a blue moon.
Or so I thought. With my curiosity piqued after reading excerpts from reader responses to the Collins piece, I decided to see just how completely I had dispensed with the semicolon. It turns out I’ve already employed it 22 times since the beginning of the year on this site alone, while the frequency of blue moons (the second full moon in a single calendar month) averages out to around once every 19 months.
A more apt description of the role of the semicolon in my writing, then, is PWB: Punctuation With Benefits, uniquely suited to certain hookup needs. How very modern!
