Am I the only one who loves semicolons? I try hard not to use them gratuitously, but I sprinkle them throughout my posts and emails when appropriate. One could certainly go overboard with semicolons, but if you neglect them entirely you're missing out on the subtle flavor of the language.
Rachel Lucas extols semicolons in a post discussing online dating, and I agree with her unspoken premise that exclamation points are their grammatical antithesis.
19. Severely curtail your use of exclamation points. For example: "I don't want to sound arrogant! But I'm a great guy! Are you a great girl? I love the outdoors! Talk to me! I'm looking to meet nice ladies for friendship and maybe more!" Good lord. Take a deep breath. By the way, I'd like to see MORE use of the semicolon; it can be pretty sexy.
I don't find that many people are particularly fond of semicolons, or even give them much thought! However, semicolons are obviously important to programmers, and there's even a Semicolon blog! Thanks to the internet I have finally found my kindred spirits.
Now if only we can get people to stop abusing the poor comma....
As you mentioned programmers (of which set I am a member), I find it funny that so many programmers are so poor grammaticians. Writing prose and programming an application are not so different of tasks.
Most people don't know how to properly use the semicolon, generally opting to misuse a comma in its place. Properly using the semicolon requires both recognizing the distinction between phrases and sentences as well as recognizing when two related sentences are too weak to stand on their own. Few people possess the training for the first condition; even fewer people possess the finese of the second.
However, there is a secondary use of the semicolon: seperating elements of a list when each element is also a list, e.g. words with multiple modifiers. "The pet shop was full of short, fat dogs; lazy, treacherous cats; and bright, colorful fish". As you know, we call this "Serialization" in programming.
capn-midnight -
Grammarians are detail freaks. Oddly enough, most developers are NOT detail freaks. They are concept sorts who aren't paranoid enough to test every piece of code in both its intended and chaotic states.
The semicolon's great, and the comma's a gem, but the most misused, maligned piece of punctuation is the apostrophe. Everyone seems to have careless apostrophe disease. I sometimes think I'm the only one who cares - I remember asking my English teacher mother when I was in grade school why "the animal licks its paw" didn't have an apostrophe, and she had a good and easy answer.
hln