If you love semicolons as much as I do, you’ll enjoy reading “Has Modern Life Killed the Semicolon?”

You might enjoy the article even if you hate semicolons! It’s not really about killing them. The article is a survey about the way attitudes have changed about the semicolon over the years. (For example, Kurt Vonnegut thought semicolons were useless. All they did was prove you’d been to college!)

I’m going to jump in with some thoughts of my own about this quirky punctuation mark.

1.  Semicolons are easy to use. Just change a period to a semicolon and lower-case the next word – unless it needs a capital letter.

We just got back from a trip to Lowe’s. My husband and I are going to paint the guest room this weekend.
We just got back from a trip to Lowe’s; my husband and I are going to paint the guest room this weekend.

I just had an excited phone call from Linda. Harvard accepted her college application.
I just had an excited phone call from Linda; Harvard accepted her college application.

2. Kurt Vonnegut is right about semicolons – they do show that you’ve been to college. That’s a  good reason for using them! What’s wrong with showing off a little?

3.  Michael Kinsley argues that semicolons are often abused. He says they can “imply a relationship between two statements without having to make clear what that relationship is.” I don’t see that as a problem. Our brains can supply the missing connection.

4. You should use semicolons sparingly. If you’re writing something short, one or two semicolons should be the limit. On a longer piece, one or two per page are enough.

5. You never have to use a semicolon. (Well, semicolons are necessary if you’re writing a particularly fancy kind of list. That hardly ever comes up. I use that list rule only two or three times a year – and I’m a professional writer.)

6. English teachers love to make semicolons difficult. Here’s a typical explanation:

Use a semicolon to join two related independent clauses in place of a comma and a coordinating conjunction (and, but, or, nor, for, so, yet). Make sure when you use the semicolon that the connection between the two independent clauses is clear without the coordinating conjunction.

Gak. Ignore that nonsense! Try my way. It always works – and it saves brainpower for other, more important writing tasks.

For several years I’ve been studying Welsh on Duolingo, hoping I’ll be able to speak Welsh when I travel to Wales on a future trip.

So I enjoyed reading a New York Times article suggesting that Stonehenge (a prehistoric site I’ve visited) may have been erected in Wales and then moved to England.

Most of the article was engaging and well written. But one sentence was awkward and confusing: “The entrance to both circles were aligned toward the midsummer solstice sunrise.”

The person who wrote that sentence seems to have been confused about an important subject-verb agreement rule. I’m going to review the rule for you, and then I’ll point out a recent wrinkle.

Let’s take a simple sentence:

Misuse of prescription drugs often is/are dangerous.

What’s dangerous – the prescription drugs, or the misuse of them? Obviously the problem is misuse. (Antibiotics save lives!) So: misuse is.

Misuse of prescription drugs often is dangerous.  CORRECT

English teachers sometimes say that you need to be aware of the loud and soft parts of sentences. I think that’s a great way to explain why you need to think about misuse is in our example.

But – as I said – there’s a wrinkle: the rule is disappearing. Even the meticulously edited New Yorker magazine sometimes publishes sentences like this one:

A group of German tourists are camping here for three nights.

It should be a group is. But nowadays you don’t have to make a fuss about it.

On the other hand, let’s not abandon common sense! The journalist who wrote our Stonehenge sentence ended up writing grammatical nonsense (the circle are). Here’s my version:

The entrances to both circles were aligned toward the midsummer solstice sunrise.  CORRECT

Not difficult!

In 1920 British composer Albert Ketèlbey (1875-1959) composed a wonderful piece of music that’s probably familiar to you: “In a Persian Market.” (You can listen to it here: https://youtu.be/pY9rHa75UHs.)

Charlie and I always enjoy the classical music channel provided by our cable TV company. We also get a kick out of seeing pictures of the composers and reading tidbits about their lives.

But sometimes the writing isn’t very good. Here’s what we read on our TV screen while we were listening to “In a Persian Market” today:

Ketèlbey received a scholarship to Trinity College, where he attended.

That is a weak sentence. It sputters to the end – exactly what you don’t want a sentence to do.

How do you fix it? I have two pieces of advice for you:

1. Don’t try tweaking a bad sentence. That never helps.
2. Start over with a new sentence.

Here’s my revision:

Ketèlbey attended Trinity College as a scholarship student.  BETTER

Problem solved!

Recently a frustrated English teacher posted this question online: What’s the difference between a direct and an indirect object?

I know the answer, of course – and I was tempted to explain the difference. But then I decided it would be better to ask a question of my own: Who cares?

Grammar gobbledygook (like “direct” and “indirect object”) is a leftover from a long-ago time when Latin was considered the perfect language. English teachers back then figured that if you learned the fine points of Latin grammar, you would be able to write as brilliantly as Cicero, Herodotus, and Virgil did.

What happened instead was that confused students memorized heaps of language concepts that had nothing whatsoever to do with English.

Take a look at these sentence pairs:

I gave him a dog.

I gave a dog a bone.

Now look at these sentence pairs (in Latin):

Canem ei dedi. (I gave him a dog.)

Cani os dedi. (I gave a dog a bone.)

The word dog is different in both Latin sentences: canem (direct object) and cani (indirect object). But in English, a dog is always…a dog.

If you’re not learning Latin, why do you need Latin grammar? I say you don’t.

But I have English teacher friends who sincerely believe that students should know these terms. I’ve gently asked them to explain why they matter. The response from them is always bewildered silence. They had teachers who thought grammar was really important, and they’re determined to keep that tradition alive.

That’s not a good enough answer.

Please, please – spend your time learning the skills that will help you write better. If you’re not sure where to start, go to your library and find a good book about writing – something with advice you can use right away.

Or (another suggestion) read up on something that interests you. That’s a great way to improve your vocabulary and sharpen your sentence skills. (Just make sure it’s not a book about grammar!)

I spend a lot of time reading and answering questions about writing online. A while ago someone asked whether this sentence was correct: “I am writing to notify you that we decided not to renew our lease.”

Charlie and I are vaccinated, and we rarely wear masks any more (though we still carry them with us). I’m hoping that the frequent-hand-washing habit we developed this year will stay with us.

We know a number of people who had COVID, and I’m happy to report that all of them pulled through.

When the sheltering-in-place orders were first announced in 2020, I made two important decisions. The first was to do everything I could to avoid getting infected with COVID.

The second was to make some serious progress on the Shaw book I was writing. I set a goal of two completed chapters.

It’s now more than a year since everything shut down. (Who knew it would be that long?) The Shaw book is…finished! (Ta-da!) A publisher is looking at it right now.

Over the next few weeks I’ll be writing about some of the lessons I learned while writing the book. Or – in some cases – relearned.

Here’s the most important one: I need to acknowledge my limitations.

I consider myself an excellent time manager. (In fact I’ve written a book about my quirky time-management system: Five Minutes a Day.) The first chapter is about the Hercules myth (also called the “All-or-Nothing-Myth”). It’s the fallacy that we can – and should – be able to get everything done.

Before the pandemic, I’d spent months and months writing a book about Bernard Shaw in my spare time. All I had to show for all that time and effort was one completed chapter and lots of abandoned attempts at other chapters.

It looked as if I’d never finish it. In fact it looked as if I’d never finish Chapter Two.

Hunkering down for the pandemic (no socializing, no dancing, no traveling, minimal housework) gave me the time and space to think deeply about the book I was writing

A year has gone by, and I’ve written a book I’m proud of. Ironically, however, I’m also somewhat more humble than I was a year ago. I discovered (for the umpteenth time!) that I’m not Superwoman.

I’m not the kind of person who can wrestle difficult content into a book while keeping a spotless house, dancing at every opportunity, and whizzing around with my friends.

One Thing at a Time. If you’re facing a difficult challenge, it’s a good rule to follow!

My friend Mike Goronsky sent me an intriguing Boston Globe article about appositives – The Pause That Annoys: When a Comma Makes Life Needlessly Hard by Jan Freeman. 

Here’s a familiar truth about writing that has become fresh and new for me: writers are always learning how to write.

When the shelter-in-place orders were issued, I decided this was an opportunity to work on my long-delayed book about my favorite Shaw plays: Pygmalion and Major Barbara. My goal was to write two chapters by September 1. (I’d already written one chapter and lots of fragments of chapters. Lots and lots of them.)

It’s August 26, and I’m happy to report that I doubled my output: I’ve written four chapters. Well, I’m not that happy about it!

Here’s what happened: I’d planned to write a chapter about drama theory and another one about language theory. The language chapter was so long that I decided it had to be two chapters. And then it became three chapters.

There were many 3 AM writing sessions when an idea couldn’t wait for sunrise for me to start exploring it on paper. This has been a tiring summer. But it’s also been exhilarating! I’ve had tremendous fun playing with all the new ideas.

What I really want to do today, though, is to talk about something I learned  from all this. Here it is: every time you sit down to write, go back to the beginning and read what you’ve already written.

I don’t know where that idea came from. It seemed like a huge waste of time. As a chapter got longer, I kept going back to the first paragraph – 10 times, 20 times, 30 times. But there were some huge payoffs. First, those early paragraphs kept getting better. All that fine tuning really helped!

More important: I stayed focused on the big idea that was driving the chapter. I had very little trouble with detours and non sequiturs. My writing had the energy that I always aim for – and don’t always get.

There’s something else I learned. I stumbled onto some writing advice from Ernest Hemingway’s A Moveable Feast. Guess what Hemingway said to do? Always go back to the beginning before you start the day’s writing.

It’s great advice: try it!

Here’s a sentence from one of Charlie’s columns that we decided to revise:

A separate category of plants are what might best be described as stealth vines.

I like strong, punchy sentences. For example, I wouldn’t write “The shrub is spectacular.” I would write “The spectacular shrub”…and then finish the sentence:  “delights visitors to our home.”

Here’s our first attempt to strengthen his sentence:

A separate category of plants comprises what might best be described as stealth vines. BETTER

Now the sentence is more active. But our revision still wasn’t punchy enough for me. Comprise isn’t a lively word. Here’s our next revision.

A separate category of plants might best be described as stealth vines.  EVEN BETTER

I like it! But it’s passive voice (“might best be described”). Let’s make it active voice:

There’s another category of plants you might describe as stealth vines.  BEST

You might be wondering what a “stealth vine” is. It’s a shrub that turns into a vine if there’s something nearby to climb. Ganges primrose, plumbago, and yellow allamanda are sometimes called “stealth vines.” That term is another example of good writing – using an intriguing word (“stealth”) to make your subject (vines) more interesting!

                                                                           Photo courtesy of Calvin Teo

Independence Day – the Fourth of July (well, the third of July!) is a good opportunity to review two English usage rules that don’t quite make sense. We’re going to declare our independence from them.

My friend Evelyn Elwell Uyemura has expertise that I can only envy, including a master’s degree in linguistics. One day recently I came across her answer to a question someone had posted online:

When and why did “very unique” become acceptable?

Here’s Evelyn’s terrific answer:

It all started when some ragamuffins wrote that they hoped to create “a more perfect union,” and it’s been downhill ever since.

English teachers will tell you that it’s illogical to say “more perfect” and “more unique.” A thing is either perfect (or unique), or it’s not. I agree, and I do not use those expressions. But you can’t push the point too far.

“A more perfect union” looks wonderful when you read it – and sounds wonderful when you hear it. Logic isn’t everything! Great writing (and the US Constitution contains a lot of great writing) is what matters.

Those “ragamuffins” Evelyn mentioned were – of course – our Founding Fathers. Evelyn’s sentence reminds us what a daring group our Founding Fathers (and Mothers) were. They weren’t just the wise and serious old men we learned about in school.

(In case you’re wondering, “more unique” was first recorded in 1782 in a book by Thomas Burgess, an English author, philosopher, and bishop. “Very unique” was first recorded in 1794 in a book by an English writer and soldier named Edward Moor. There are many other recorded uses of unique with a qualifier in the late 18th century. It’s nothing new.)

Let’s use our patriotism to challenge another rule: you can’t use a possessive with an inanimate object. For example, you’re not supposed to talk about a “home’s electrical system.” It has to be a person: “Mary’s book.”

Nonsense! To prove it, here are some phrases from a famous song that you’re certainly familiar with: “The Star Spangled Banner,” by Francis Scott Key:

“the dawn’s early light”

“the twilight’s last gleaming”

“the rocket’s red glare”

There are more possessives in the subsequent verses: “the morning’s first beam,” “the war’s desolation,” and “their foul footsteps’ pollution.”

Enjoy the Independence Day weekend!