I attended a writing seminar many years ago and the speaker – - who was pontificating from  his “I am great” platform – - told the gathering that the use of a semicolon would guarantee a rejection slip. As a long-time semicolon user (and lover), his proclamation scared the bejeezus out of me. Fortunately, the fright was temporary.

For the grammar heathens among us,  according to Wikipedia:

Ben Jonson was the first notable English writer to use it systematically. The modern uses of the semicolon relate either to the listing of items or to the linking of related clauses. [I choose the latter usage]

According to the British writer on grammar, Lynne Truss, many non writers avoid the colon and semicolon for various reasons: “They are old-fashioned“, “They are middle-class“, “They are optional“, “They are mysteriously connected to pausing“, “They are dangerously addictive (vide Virginia Woolf)”, and “The difference between them is too negligible to be grasped by the brain of man“.

In my world, a semicolon is a wondrously useful way of connecting two thoughts about a related subject. An example of the semicolon: Everyone knows he is guilty of committing the crime; of course, it will never be proven.

I so often have two (or more) thoughts running about inside my head  that the semicolon is as natural as taking a brief pause when speaking. I haven’t moved on to another point or another topic; I’m simply giving my breath a chance to catch up. Thus, the semicolon.

Dear Reader, please cast your vote; yeah or nay for the semicolon.

A popular post from last year

Would you buy your own products?

I heard something yesterday that really got me thinking about this.

Someone called into A Way With Words–the National Public Radio show that discusses language, as in regional dialects, slang, word origins, grammar, and weird expressions–and asked about the use of “dog food” as a verb.

Apparently the term had its birth in the software/tech industry, and was used as a way of saying that software developers should actually use the products they were developing. Dog food (the verb) has evolved to mean “to use a product or service that was created by you.”

That made me think about all of us who are out here on the Internet, creating services and products for the consumer market – - and it forced me to ask the question of myself:  Do I dog food my own products and services? If I wasn’t writing my blog, or my books, or creating my videos, would I read me?

I don’t know why such a simple question has thrown me into such soul-searching because I work hard to create quality work. But it did . . . and I’m still pondering the question.

What do you think? Do you dog food your own products?  Leave a comment and let me know.