SEMI-COLONS—LOVE AND PASSION.

SEMI-COLONS—LOVE AND PASSION. In this post of three years ago about passion and the semi-colon, I told about a duel in France in 1837 about whether a colon or a semi-colon was correct in a particular sentence, and about how there are some who were taught never to use a semi-colon and others, like Mary Jane, for whom the semi-colon is their favorite punctuation mark. In an article entitled “Semicolons: a Love Story” in the “Draft” series in the New York Times (July 2), Ben Dolnick quotes Kurt Vonnegut: “Do not use semicolons….They are transvestite hermaphrodites representing absolutely nothing. All they do is show you’ve been to college.” Dolnick followed Vonnegut on semi-colons for years, but says he was converted to the semi-colon by William James. Dolnick found that for James, semi-colons were “vital tools in keeping what [James] called the ‘stream of thought’ from appearing to the reader as a wild torrent.” Dolnick values the way semi-colons can be used to reflect the way our thoughts move.