It seems like everywhere I turn, lately, there’s someone saying something about semicolons. So it was no surprise to come across this image on the Word yesterday. Yes, there’s someone out there (Rachel Manwill, an editor for PR Newswire, to be specific) who’s gone and gotten themselves a semicolon tattoo:
In the meantime, hat tips to Editrix and Fritinancy for the heads-up on a piece by Sarah Hepola at Salon, “Is the Semicolon Girlie?” which references a recent Jan Freeman piece about said punctuation, “Sex and the Semicolon: The Punctuation Mark that Makes Men Tremble.” Here’s an excerpt from Freeman’s piece:
The credit probably belongs to Trevor Butterworth, who in 2005–citing [Lynne] Truss as partial inspiration–wrote a 2,700-word essay on the semicolon in the Financial Times. Butterworth, who had worked in the States, wondered why so many Americans shared Donald Barthelme’s sense that the mark was “ugly as a tick on a dog’s belly.” His answer: As a culture, we Yanks distrust nuance and complexity.
But are you possibly over the whole semicolon thing? Then I give you The Ampersand.
