By Frank Anthony Polito
An another interesting post for all writers -- or anyone, really, who ever writes anything.
From The Week, via Yahoo! News: 7 grammar rules you should really pay attention to
After having published 4 books (3 novels and a novella -- how I hate using the word "novella"!), I feel like I've picked up a great deal from my wonderful Production Editor, Paula, in terms of grammatical "rules." But the one that still gets me is #6: the semicolon.
According to the poster, Ben Yagoda: "there are really only two proper uses for this piece of punctuation. One is to separate two complete clauses (a construction with a subject and verb that could stand on its own as a sentence). I knocked on the door; no one answered. The second is to separate list items that themselves contain punctuation. Thus, The band played Boise, Idaho; Schenectady, New York; and Columbus, Ohio."
Rarely do I ever use a semicolon in my writing (the same can NOT be said for the exclamation mark, as anyone who's read either Band Fags! or Drama Queers! will attest), though the current novel I'm working on is inspired by one of Michael Chabon's -- and he uses them all over the place.
I hope I've gotten it "right" in what I'm doing. But I plan to go back through the manuscript and make sure :-)
This is awesome!
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