Time for a little confession.  Despite being,

A)  Born and raised in America
B) Fluent in English (author's note: and this is in spite of spending several of my formative years in Texas)
C) An English major
D) a professional writer

I still have no goddamn idea how to use a semicolon.  And I still use them all the time; like; I'll just get flustered and start throwing them into sentences; cause I think they make me look smart; and I'm in a shame spiral about not knowing proper punctuation; and; balls. 

Every time I turn in a book, I wait for my editor to call me and yell at me for having shitty punctuation, but as of yet, that hasn't happened.  I'm not sure why.  Maybe since I got a book out there, people confuse my grammatical ignorance with "artistic flair" or something.  And I'm cool with that. 

But for those of you who actually want to know how to use a semi-colon, I recommend you check out this webcomic.  It's by a dude called "The Oatmeal" and it prominently features bear fighting and party gorillas, and maybe if my teachers had tried teaching me grammar with a little more of that, I might have paid a little more attention.  

NEXT BLOG: 

In which I talk about writing word goals and such will be up super quick. 
 


Comments

Paul Michael Murphy

Fri, 29 Jan 2010 13:12:19

At least you admit you don't know. I pretend to know, use them liberally, and hope everyone who reads my stuff is just as clueless as I am.

 

Jennifer S. Pitts

Sat, 30 Jan 2010 18:38:14

I admit it, I have NO clue. I finally had to print out the definition of colon vs. semicolon and post it near my computer. So glad to see I'm not alone.

 

Kelly Polark

Tue, 02 Feb 2010 12:07:26

I think I even taught third graders how to use a semi-colon; I still have to look up how to use it. (but it's been ten years since I taught third graders btw)
;
Murph has an award for you on his blog;go give him some love.

 

Doyle "The Brother" Esch

Sun, 07 Mar 2010 14:56:42

Where is the article you promised about word count goals? It's been a month. And that was a promise.

 



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