In Defense of the Semi-noble Semicolon 🖋

My good friend Nate wrote to tell me he enjoyed the blog, but added “I hafta go with my man Kurt V. & say don’t use semicolons – they aren’t a real thing.”

What Mr. Vonnegut actually wrote was “Here is a lesson in creative writing. The first rule: do not use semicolons. They are transvestite hermaphrodites representing absolutely nothing. All they do is show you’ve been to college.”

(Were Kurt alive today, he would realize the preferred term is “transpunctuationals.”)

I’m glad Vonnegut qualified his statement as applying to creative writing. For most other writing, you actually do want people to think you’ve been to college. That’s a good thing. As for creative writing, if you are an acknowledged master, worshiped by millions, then by all means bend the rules to your liking. But if you’re just starting out, it’s more of a delicate thing. Junior editors tasked with reading the slush pile are looking for any excuse to stop reading. Fail to use proper grammar, pretend you are a literary ground-breaker, and your submission is likely to be tossed back on the pile. Use too many semicolons and your writing sounds like a legal brief. Again, back on the pile.

But something else may be going on here. We are a polarized people, and it shows in our grammatical choices. On the one side are the permissive losers and their run-on sentences who think the rules don’t apply to them and they should be allowed to do whatever the hell they want. On the other side are the creativity-killing, conservative tight asses who yell “lock ‘em up!” every time they find a however preceded by a comma. No one has any respect, anymore, for the moderate middle ground. The middle ground, we are told, is for those who lack the courage to take a stand.

So be it. I proudly own my middle-groundedness, my wishy-washiness. I will let my moderation be known to all men (and women, for that matter). I will be (forgive me, Mr. Salieri) the patron saint of moderates. The semicolon shall be my symbol. I will wear it proudly on a t-shirt, a sideways wink missing a nose and a smile, proclaiming to the world that I can see both sides of the issue. I am who I am!

Wow, Nate. You seem to have struck a nerve.