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Grammar Wars

07 Apr 2008 12:58 pm

By Patrick
France debates the fate of the ailing semi-colon:

Encouragingly, a Committee for the Defence of the Semicolon appeared on the web (only to disappear some days later, which cannot be a very good sign). Articles have been written in newspapers and magazines. The topic is being earnestly discussed on the radio. It was even the subject of an April Fool's joke on a leading internet news site, which claimed, perfectly plausibly, that President Nicolas Sarkozy had just decreed that to preserve the poor point-virgule from an untimely end, it must henceforth be used at least three times a page in all official correspondence.

Scott Esposito:

Personally, I can't imagine why anyone would want to get rid of the semicolon, otherwise how do you connect two thoughts that lie somewhere between an em dash and a comma?

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