Why semicolons are lovely and colons less so

[Clive_T]

Originally published at: https://boingboing.net/2019/09/11/why-semicolons-are-lovely-and.html

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[anon61833566]

semi colons are the cadillac of punctuation.

[normanack]

It will be disappointing if many of the comments here do not include semicolons; they are so lovely.

[Richard_Kirk]

Another thing was to use dashes - because they break up a sentence less than brackets - if you want to jam in a sub-clause.

[tuhu]

@Richard_Kirk

Another thing was to use dashes - because they break up a sentence less than brackets - if you want to jam in a sub-clause

A -'s not a dash, this is a –. Or if you really want to do it right, it should be a —.

[SheiffFatman]

@tuhu

Or if you really want to do it right

Robert Bringhurst would disagree with you:

The em dash is the nineteenth-century stand­ard, still pre­scribed by many edit­or­ial style books, but the em dash is too long for use with the best text faces. Like the over­sized space between sen­tences, it belongs to the pad­ded and cor­seted aes­thetic of Vic­torian typography. Use spaced en dashes – rather than em dashes or hyphens – to set off phrases.

[Faffenreffer]

@tuhu

A -'s not a dash, this is a –. Or if you really want to do it right, it should be a —.

Shouldn’t that read:

A -'s not a dash, this is a –; if you really want to do it right, it should be a —.

[gracchus]

The colash and semi-colash are true abominations; I wish I’d never heard of either.

[tuhu]

I’m fine with that. Bringhurst was 90% right about typesetting, which makes him a legend compared to others who got things so wrong (and setting aside his forays into cultural appropriation, of course)

He still wouldn’t want a hyphen used to set off phrases.

[SheiffFatman]

@tuhu

He still wouldn’t want a hyphen used to set off phrases.

Oh God, no.

[tuhu]

I thought the “Or” was might help imply that it was more a choice of style than a command; it’s sometimes hard to get the right tone.

Using an en- or an em-dash does depend on the typeface used in context. For longer text, my preference would lean toward typefaces where the longer dash is nice.

[Kevin_O_Mac]

@Clive_T

I probably use too many of them, because of how incredibly flexible they are; how they loosely tie together loosely related ideas; how you can use them for lists.

While I fully support your advocacy of semi-colons—a truly underrated piece of punctuation—as a former copyeditor/proofreader, I regret to inform you that you are using them wrong. At least in the sentence quoted. Semi-colons are not used to tie together loosely related ideas; they are used as a soft period to connect two loosely related structurally complete sentences. In your quote, you are using them to string together dependent clauses (really sentence fragments), which is the job of a comma. Or, maybe you intended it as punctuation for items in a list. However, a semi-colon is only used in lists if the items in the list involve internal punctuation (commas, em-dashes); in these cases, the semi-colon basically functions as a big comma. But your post illuminates the primary reason the semi-colon is so unpopular: because most people don’t know how to use them. (Now I see how the colon seems preachy.)

[Kevin_O_Mac]

Have you met the interrobang‽

[ArcLighter]

@SheiffFatman

Like the over­sized space between sen­tences, it belongs to the pad­ded and cor­seted aes­thetic of Vic­torian typography.

I might disagree with Mr. Bringhurst; the padded space can provide subtle but appreciated cognitive relief when moving between variables in financial analysis reports.

[SheiffFatman]

@ArcLighter

I might disagree with Mr. Bringhurst; the padded space can provide subtle but appreciated cognitive relief when moving between variables in financial analysis reports.

If you’re looking for Victorian sources of relief for that, I’d have thought laudanum would have been higher up the list.

[Jorpho]

The semicolon tells you that there is still some question about the preceding full sentence; something needs to be added

See also: the trendy semicolon tattoo.

Semicolon tattoo: Here's what it means and why it matters.

Now, if there’s one thing that gets me steamed, it’s that horrifically abused ellipsis, especially when a whole pile of random extra periods gets tossed in – as if we’re just supposed to accept that the writer was too lost in profound thought to bother with putting down actual words. Except for the ellipsis-question-mark – in these bizarre times, it seems a convenient way to express shocked disbelief.

[ArcLighter]

O’ cruel fate! That I have but one like to give tears at the fabric of my soul, eternal consternation which is surely the origin of these brackish waters upon my countenance.

[bryan]

I think they seem so lovely because they are the most exotic form of punctuation that most Windows users are able to type.

[generic_name]

“I’ll cut your ass in half and leave you with a semicolon.” --Mr. Man/Reflection Eternal “Fortified Live.”

[Brainspore]

@Richard_Kirk

Another thing was to use dashes - because they break up a sentence less than brackets - if you want to jam in a sub-clause.

You just used a hyphen in place of an Em dash. That’s a punctuation crime!

Hyphen (-) used to carry a word to another line, join two words (“Mrs. Smith-Jones,” “Irish-American”) or, in a pinch, use as a subtraction sign if your font doesn’t include mathematical symbols.

En Dash (–) used to denote a range of values (“Open 9am–5pm,” “Tickets $15–$45”)

Em Dash (—) used to denote a pause, aside or sub-clause. (“I enjoy—most of the time—discussions about typography.”)