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One should decide if one is using it because it’s the best way to communicate with one’s audience or if one is proud that one knows how to use a semicolon prope
by paulcole 5y ago
One should decide if one is using it because it’s the best way to communicate with one’s audience or if one is proud that one knows how to use a semicolon properly.
- mdp2021 5y agoIf your audience benefits from expressions that avoid semicolon, the point is in the expression, not in its nuts and bolts: you use an apt structure, which should anyway in general follow sensible rules. And you should not pollute the minds of your audience, so surely you want to avoid "reinforcing the use of something wrong by adopting it": you may, with ability, simplify a structure, but still crafting something eventually well and properly done. This rules out misplacing said "nuts and bolts". Pride has nothing to do with it - to use logarithms for magnitudes is not "showing off".
- paulcole 5y agoI’m not sure if you’re agreeing with me or not? I’ll double down on my original point. If, in 2021, you’re 100% sure you absolutely positively need to be using a semicolon in your writing, you need to reevaluate your position.
- mdp2021 5y agoWhy should 2021 be different than any other year. I cannot see a reason to avoid using the semicolon. It is part of proper expression - it's useful, available and innocent.
- paulcole 5y agoBecause language evolves. Today essentially nobody uses a semicolon in conversational and casual writing. For the average person, using a semicolon is an affectation like wearing a fedora. Some people look good doing it but most don’t.
- denton-scratch 5y agoI use semi-colons in coversational writing. Also, it so happens that I wear a fedora. It's not an affectation, it's just a felt hat. My natural scalp insulation started to fall out a decade or so ago, so I started wearing beanies. But now I feel much more at home under a fedora - apart from anything else, the hat works as a sort of miniature umbrella.
- paulcole 5y agoI mean yes, this is exactly what I’m talking about. Use semi-colons if you want and wear a fedora if you want, but understand the image you’re putting out into the world if you do.
- mdp2021 5y agoWhereas, how would you evaluate the image you would project, by not using semicolons (or anything that would fall into this matter of use, appropriateness and possible reactions) when appropriate, or by refusing to do it to follow the use of some not better defined writers, or for fear of the judgement of some very generically mentioned public? Which kind of public are you courting?
- paulcole 5y agoWrite with semicolons or wear a fedora and I can make a few (likely accurate) guesses about who you are. Either you’re OK with giving off those vibes or not. Personally, I’m not. So I’d rather just not use semicolons.
- mdp2021 5y ago> guesses about who you are Someone who uses instruments properly and competently?¹ You have chosen different vibes: you have not just avoided some, you have embraced others. "Conformist" has not, historically, been used as a compliment. Within epistemology, if researchers had put "group adherence" before "truth adherence", humanity - very loosely speaking - would still be using epicycles, ignore bacteria, use for the subatomic newtonian equations (which would not exist, because of course "distant action is unthinkable") etc. So, here is one profile you could guess: someone who knows that distributions are bell curves instead of slopes - the extreme is less frequent than the median -, so someone who knows that "common sense" expresses a wish, when replacing the proper expression "good sense". So, someone who tries to carry on one's work objectively irregardless (and often in spite) of spurious fads and trends. -- ¹Provided, of course, such is the case.