(semi) Colonic Irritation

It's funny how easily you can get stuck in a rut, referring to self-confirming media (this may be blogs' downfall). Was it William James who said: "People think they are thinking when they are just re-arranging their prejudices".

Surprise and joy then to find myself reading the Financial Times (!!!) - shit now I'm going to be accused of being a Mosleyite venture Capitalist.

But - to offer some context to this - a free copy was thrust into my sticky paws as I entered an enclosed space for two hours (a plane stuck in a runway). Maybe even an Ian Rankin novel would have seemed good under these conditions, but the inside feature bit was actually pretty good, explaining just why Americans now consider the semicolon as part of the lexicon of evil!

The great semi-colon debate is here.

Now this may just be a reflection of the same vacuity that creates earnest debate about the Berliner edition of the Gruniad (should that now be lower case gruniad?). Or that shook Peter Wilby to write, a tad over-excitedly: "The future of British journalism may depend on whether times2 or the Berliner Guardian proves more successful" - or that motivates the deeply deeply boring "Eats, Shoots and Leaves" brigade, but for me, there was something in it all.

At first I was confused - until Fred Barnes – some American media dude explained: "They should be turned into periods."

Wtf are 'periods'?

And then it dawned on me that language & grammar is one thing Americans shouldn't really be consulted on, and anything that allows more rather than less complexity and the author to go on long rambling, and ultimately confusing sentences; in which the subject, object and general content get utterly confused, has to be a good thing.

3 comments

; vs .
The Thrilla on Manilla

left by tiny on 22 September 2005

Pretty sure there's another 'a' in 'grauniad', what with it being an anagram 'n' all ;-)

left by hodgers on 23 September 2005

Grauniad your quite right. But its not a anagram. It refers to when the Grauniad mispelt its own banner title.

left by Gus on 26 September 2005