6 ms·

The title misuses a semicolon and should use a colon to join two somewhat-related ideas where there is a directional causality. > Prescriptive grammar brings t

• timewizard 1y ago
  I love semicolons; because, they bring the drama. Maybe?
  • deleted 1y ago
    [deleted]
  • QuercusMax 1y ago
    You don't need the incorrect comma after because.
    • neilv 1y ago
      Correct use of comma: "I love drama; bring it, bitch!"
  • kiitos 1y ago
    Nah, this is pretty awkward. "I love semicolons; they bring the drama!" "I love semicolons, because they bring the drama" "Semicolons: I love them for their drama" "Semicolons, drama, love: an incoherent journey through language and LLMs"
    • owlstuffing 1y ago
      Or, if you are an AI: “I prefer the em dash — it’s my calling card.”
• yzydserd 1y ago
  I feel a semicolon is more appropriate; I would not declare misuse. Prescriptive grammar brings the drama; that’s why I love it. The second clause is more a continuation than an explanation. This works, though. There is one reason I love prescriptive grammar: it brings the drama.
  • xanderlewis 1y ago
    I fully agree with this.
  • kiitos 1y ago
    It's the "that's" that's the issue. Prescriptive grammar brings the drama; no matter what I do, I can't stop loving it. > There is one reason I love prescriptive grammar: it brings the drama. Masterclass.
• dahart 1y ago
  The sentence would be correct with a comma, therefore it’s correct with a semicolon, if going by either the Oxford or Wikipedia definitions. Colon works, and it changes the flavor slightly, but it’s certainly not the only way to write this sentence. It’s a subjective and stylistic choice, not a correctness choice. I’m finding more and more often that declaring language misuse, whether words or punctuation, tends to backfire; it’s almost never correct to say someone used language wrong, because language has a broader history with a wider variety of usage than we all learned in school, and we (me included) have a hard time accepting that the way we learned it isn’t the only way. Now I’m trying to enjoy all the fluidity and weirdness of language and study all the ways the rules I learned in school are just wrong.
  • mmooss 1y ago
    > The sentence would be correct with a comma, therefore it’s correct with a semicolon Could you show us where that is said? I'm almost certain that the opposite is true. The only place a semicolon substitutes for a comma or vice versa is in a list, where the list item(s) contain a comma and therefore commas delineation is confusing (like a CSV where data itself contains commas); there you use semicolons. Otherwise, there is no overlap in usage: comma semicolon second clause is, independent N Y dependent Y N list Y N
    • pmg101 1y ago
      The sentence would not read well with a comma. It would be an example of the error known as "comma splice": that's why it should be a colon not a semicolon.
      • dahart 1y ago
        Naw, the “it” in the 2nd clause is referring to the first clause, and they are directly related. They are not independent unrelated clauses, and that’s the criteria for a comma splice. Your assertion that a colon should be used contradicts the idea that using a comma would make it a comma splice error. In this case, this sentence’s meaning and point would get across unambiguously no matter what punctuation is used between comma, period, colon or semicolon. What else matters?
• rendaw 1y ago
  The structure is backwards for a colon. The colon precedes the explanation, but the explanation is first here. You'd need something like > I love semicolons: they bring the drama. This should be an em-dash or should be parenthesized, adding supplemental information. > Semicolons bring the drama -- that's why I love them.
• 22c 1y ago
  The entire article, probably quite intentionally, seems to overuse semicolons (in my opinion). I say this as a semicolon enjoyer, but I think the overuse of semicolons in this article leads the reader to a bit of semicolon fatigue by the end of it.
• kiitos 1y ago
  The title is pretty awkward and probably wrong, but your alternative here is at least as awkward and probably even more wrong. Both of these bad sentences begin their second clause(s) with "that's...", which obviously doesn't work, structurally, in either case. But that's an interesting observation! I've learned something here today. Thank you.
• dragonwriter 1y ago
  The title correctly uses a semicolon to divide two independent clauses that are used in a single sentence; a colon is sometimes an option for this (but never to the exclusion of the semicolon), such as where the second independent clause is a summary, explanation, or example of the first—in this case, the first explains the second, which is the inverse of a relationship for which a colon would be appropriate.
• mmooss 1y ago
  Could you cite something here? Afaik the rules for colons are pretty loose. Maybe the author doesn't mean what you think they mean - maybe the semicolon should cause you to rethink your interpretation rather than their grammar.
• eschatology 1y ago
  Agreed, I would have used either em dash or parens here: Semicolons bring the drama (that’s why I love them) Semicolons bring the drama — that’s why I love them. The semicolon somewhat works here but IMO not the best use of it (though perhaps intentional, to bring the drama).