Re: CHAT: Dashes

> From: Constructed Languages List [mailto:CONLANG@LISTSERV.BROWN.EDU]On
> Behalf Of Christophe Grandsire
> > I also like using dashes.  Although i did have one teacher who tried to
> > dissuade me from using them, so since then i try to use more variety in
> > my punctuation, sometimes even using semicolons.  I have a friend who's
> > an English major who (over)uses semicolons all over the place the way
> > we
> > use dashes.
Yes, I use dashes a lot. It reflects the way I ramble a lot.

> I HATE semicolons!!!! I hate them so much that I have banned them
> from my style.
> You will never see any semicolon in my works. I have perfectly
> enough of the
> full stop and the comma, thank you very much. I also dislike to
> read a text full
> of semi-colons. Usually, full stops would have been just fine,
> and semi-colons
> artificially lengthen sentences to no end. In fact, I've never
> quite understood
> the role of the semi-colon. I've never seen any text where it couldn't be
> replaced by a full stop or by a comma with advantage of a better
> readability...
That's what you think! I like semi-colons, and find that they are very
useful; sometimes a full stop will stuff the tone and intonation up no end
(I don't know about French, but (my) English does require tone an awful lot,
at the grammatical, the morephemical, the generalical, and the generic
levels, and I get accused of speaking in a monotone), but a comma doesn't
have enough stopping power. But I guess semi-colons could be replaced with
dashen in places like that sentence I just said, but certaily never full
stops or a comman.
(Oh, and both those -(e)n ending plurals are simply personal things, I often
use it after /s/, /S/, or a vowel amongst F&F.

> The only language where semicolons are used nicely is Greek. But
> of course, in
> Greek it's used as a question mark :) .
In which case it isn't a semi-colon any more than a rho is a P. Do they have
a semi-colon at all? How do all these languages get by without the
assortment of punctuation of Latin's alphabet?

Tristan

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