The Right Word

Born helpless, nude and unable to provide for himself, Lore Sjöberg eventually overcame these handicaps to become a handyman, a handicapper and a handmaiden.

Johnny spun to face a bookcase of art criticism and wondered desperately if K came before or after N.  The alphabet, a pillar, a solace and a certainty since kindergarten, had suddenly deserted him.  He stood, bewildered and staring, as if he’d suffered a crisis of faith.  Does the alphabet exist?  If the alphabet exists, why is there so much suffering in the world?  The alphabet is dead.
—Cathleen Schine, The Love Letter

Huckleberry Finnegans Wake. A plucky lad and a runaway slave fall asleep
on a raft in the stream of consciousness.

Inherit the Wind in the Willows. A mole, a rat, and a toad are brought
to trial by weasels for daring to believe in evolution.

Moby-Dick-and-Jane. "Look, Ishmael! See Dick breach. Breach, Dick, breach!"

All animals are famous for 15 minutes,
but some are more famous than others.

—George Warhol, author of Animal Farm
and leader of pop art movement.

God gave a loaf to Mr. Scrooge,
But just a crumb to me.

—Emily Dickens, author of "Because I Could not
Stop for Death" and A Christmas Carol.

I live in fear of being called out on my inappropriate use of the majestic semicolon, that someone will notice it and realize that I do not even have a grade school-level education in punctuation and grammar. Sure, I may have nearly gone to the National Spelling Bee when I was 11, but I cannot form a proper sentence.

[ . . .]

In the end, however, I think I would prefer it if no one spoils the mystery for me. I will sleep more easily at night (The Guy Snoring Above Me notwithstanding) knowing that there is yet a little magic in the world, something I cannot explain.

The broken thought is finishing; the thought is done.

He could not handle the embrace; he would have cried and shaken.

The thing you search for is here; you search for spiraling punctuation.

The semicolon “signals that you’re not expressing a singular thought”, explains the prolific cultural critic, Chris Lehmann. “It signals that there’s tension, that there is some contradictory evidence - and you [have to] sort of trust readers to be able to deal with that, which most editors don’t and many writers don’t.” Menand locates this fear of complexity in the idea that language should do no more than hold up a mirror to the world. “If you subscribe to linguistic transparency, there’s a bias in favour of simplicity,” he says.

[...]

It may seem bizarre to read so much into a stop on the page, but the semicolon is a pause for ambiguity, amusement, complexity, doubt, and nuance. If writing lacks these “genteel” qualities, can we be all that surprised if it is either as dull as a computer manual, or as demagogic as a soapbox on Hyde Park Corner?

Semicolon and I are best of friends, but that wasn't always the case. When I was in highschool--and I shudder to think of this--I actually said "the semicolon is a superfluous punctuation mark; any old parasitic semicolon can be replaced with a respectable period," if not in so many words (or punctuation marks!). Since then, I've come to appreciate the level of nuance that the semicolon makes possible. Semicolon and I are inseperable . . .

Game officials who finally got that semi-colon said they never saw anything like it.  Said it was like something out of one of those extra-large-print books for old people.  I was like, no shit:  I saw the mother.  With punctuation like that out there, you'd be safer going to Africa to hunt exclamation marks.  People see a semi-colon, they laugh.  Because a semi-colon looks harmless.  Well, go ask Charlie how harmless they are.  Go ask Charlie.

It is not easy to write with dispassion of the odious semicolon, but let me try: Except for its function in one copy-editing circumstance, the semicolon is worthless.  It is the most pusillanimous, sissified, utterly useless mark of punctuation ever invented.  Sensitive editors should abolish it forthwith. Forthwith! [...]  The semicolon is a belly-up guppie in a tank of glorious Siamese fighting fish.  It's girly.  It is not just probably the most useless of all forms of punctuation.  It is absolutely, positively the most useless of all such marks ever invented.