Feb 21, 2008
The Champagne of Punctuation
If you had to choose your favorite mark of punctuation, which would you choose? I of course love the exclamation mark(!), but it's not my favorite; instead the semicolon wins this contest. A dear childhood friend of mine says, and I quote from personal correspondence, "I see the semi-colon as special; it is, if you will, the Champagne of punctuation." Quite rightly. Two independent, yet related clauses, joined as one. Ahh.
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Did you read this recent New York Times article about semicolon? http://www.nytimes.com/2008/02/18/nyregion/18semicolon.html
Personally, em dash is the one I love most. Simplicity on the surface, but so much tradition and history beneath. (If em dashes could talk, I bet they would have world’s most interesting stories!) It’s disruptive, and sometimes downright rude—but then again usually set so close with the surrounding words, it borders on intimacy (those typesetters that can’t cope usually surround it by hair spaces, but not me :) ). However weird it will sound, I always felt it’s the most trustworthy of punctuation marks. And these days—slowly falling out of favour—it is something of a treasure to preserve too.
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