Re: CHAT: Dashes

En réponse à David Peterson <DigitalScream@...>:

>
>     Of course, if you read something by Virginia Woolf, you'll see
> semi-colons prostituted all over the page.  But the way I use them is
> very
> specific.  I use them to tie to simultaneous or related sentences
> together.
> Take the two following examples: (1) "I went to the beach today; Megan
> was
> out of town" and (2) "I went to the beach today.  Megan was out of
> town."  In
> number two, those are two random sentences that seemingly have nothing
> to do
> with each other.  They may as well have been written by Hemingway.  In
> number
> one, however, the semi-colon implies that I went to the beach BECAUSE
> Megan
> was out of town, without the clutter of a "because" in there.  It's
> giving
> meaning to free-flowing thought.
I'd rather have the "because" here (or at least a simple "for"). I find it more
understandable than a loose connection I don't know what to do with... Maybe
that's due to my way of thinking, or to the fact that in French the connection
words "mais ou et donc or ni car" span a whole lot of possibilities and are
small enough for free-flowing thought.

  That's why I love punctuation, and
> shall
> always love my friend the semi-colon, be he used to tie similar
> thoughts
> togethere, or to indicate Acchian queries.
>
It seems that the English and French use of the semi-colon are so different that
we won't find an agreement on this point. Well, still, there is one instance
where I use the semi-colon a lot: to mark the end of a special character in HTML
:)) .

Christophe.

http://rainbow.conlang.free.fr