Word: semi-colons
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...subway poster. The piece, beginning with this most banal of leads, develops into a disconcerting death knell for the richer punctuation of yesteryear: prominent lefties like Noam Chomsky wax elegiac and crack wise about grammar, the implicit assumption being that people under seventy see the semi-colon and think, “what’s wrong with that comma...
...with equal vitriol at the designed hitter rule, modern art, and new cars with gaudy interior design. The admiration he expressed for Lech Walesa is no more important than his celebration of the ringing of bells (church, not door or phone), the National Cathedral, the Chicago Cubs, and the semi-colon...
...Cross seems confused about the ages of her characters; a man who seems thirtyish suddenly becomes a World War II vet, for example. The denouement of the mystery is predictable and dull. And a minor annoyance: Cross's work suffers from the classic academician's addiction to the semi-colon. Alas, it is no surprise, considering Amanda Cross is, in real life, Carolyn Heilbrun, a tenured professor of English at (of all places) Columbia...
Firefall tonight at the Orpheum; Punkpin decorating contest at the Franklin Park Zoo tomorrow night; Chicago, unlike Bertha, is coming around here anymore on November 8; semi-colon; Charlie Daniels at the Orf on the Fifth; Joan Armatrading (tremendous voice), The Ramones (cute mugs, Rockwell likes 'em) and The Talking Heads (former Modern Lovers included, for those who remember, those who care) are all up-and-coming; Firefall cancelled [drat]; Styx the 4th at the Orf; at the Paradise: Southside Johnny like right now or something, Chris Hillman, Sea Level and Mink De Ville coming up, not to mention Charles...
...material is clearly organized, with cross-references where appropriate. Carey takes up seriatim the various punctuationl signs: period, colon, semi-colon, comma, parentheses, brackets, exclamation and question marks, single and double quotation marks, hyphen, apostrophe, capitals, italics, and paragraph indentation. And, although they are somewhat ancillary to the main topic, he adds two chapters--one on proofreading (I found only two slips in proofreading in the whole book); and the other on common grammatical and stylistic errors in such matters as participial agreement, the barbarous use of "following" for "after," the "due to"-"owing to" distinction, the coupling of relative...