/lit/ - Literature

[Anonymous No.18392929]

>semicolons in dialogue

[Anonymous No.18392940]

>>18392929
But I use semicolons when I speak; it's only natural to use them in dialogue

[Anonymous No.18392978]

>>18392929
I don't really know how to correctly use semicolons; nonetheless, I do.

[Anonymous No.18393144]

>>18392978
you can do it Melville-style and fuckin chain eight sentence back-to-back using nothing but semi-colons to hold that shit together

[Anonymous No.18393201]

>>18392929
People often speak with semicolons; you just don't notice it.

[Anonymous No.18393333]

>>18393144
Love that stuff. Often see it in 17 & 18th century prose, colons used like mortar holding the whole thing together.

[Anonymous No.18393349]

>>18392929
semicolon good

[Anonymous No.18393380]

>>18392929
>The author is respected by Academia world renowned
>No quotation marks just spacing changes and hyphens
>Abuses every capitalization formality intentionally

[Anonymous No.18393399]

>>18393144
>>18393333
Just go full Faulkner bro

[Anonymous No.18393741]

>>18393144
If you even attempted that now you would be brought up for writing wrong, fuck it if you posted in the writing general here 15 faggots would post the gay dog photo.

[Anonymous No.18394132]

>>18393741
What gay dog photo?

[Anonymous No.18394242]

>>18394132
the grammar fag dog image

[࿇ C Œ M G E N V S ࿇ !KNDY3cHnRY No.18394968]

>>18392929


THE ENTIRE USERBASE OF THIS BOARD ALREADY KNOWS THAT YOU ARE TOO DUMB TO UNDERSTAND THE FUNCTION OF THE SEMICOLON; YOU CAN STOP MAKING THESE THREADS NOW.

[Anonymous No.18394976]

>>18393399
Faulkner is more of an 'excessive use of commas' kind of guy

>>18394968
thank you cumgenius, very cool

[Anonymous No.18394993]

>"correctly" using a semicolon
grow up

[Anonymous No.18394996]

>>18392929
fucking love them

[Anonymous No.18395073]

>>18394968
I prefer uneducated proles like OP to balding morons like you though

[Anonymous No.18395151]

>>18395073
Balding?

[Anonymous No.18395154]

>>18395073
>though

[Anonymous No.18397164]

>>18393399
>Faulkner
Who?

[Anonymous No.18397213]

>Semicolons? No, I don't see the point of them - after all we can do this instead.

[Anonymous No.18397216]

>>18392978
This.
>>18393144
Somebody teach me how to use semicolons properly; I'm retarded and I want to learn. Can I just use them in place of periods like I did above? Or am I autsitic?

[Anonymous No.18397677]

>>18397216

——— SEMICOLONS ———

The basic idea is simple.

A comma separates two clauses which aren't both sentences in their own right. A semicolon joins two sentences. Let's take two short sentences:
>The king impregnated his chambermaid.
>The queen was not pleased.
Suppose we want to join these? We use a semicolon:
>The king impregnated his chambermaid; the queen was not pleased.

Contrast that with the following:
>The king impregnated his chambermaid, who was an absolute babe.
Here we use a comma because the second part ('who was an absolute babe') isn't a sentence on its own. It only makes sense joined to the first part.

The first example also shows basically *where* and *why* we use a semicolon. We use it to join two related sentences, for two main reasons:
* It makes the writing flow more smoothly. Lots of short sentences get a bit choppy.
* It implies a logical connection. When we say
>The king impregnated his chambermaid; the queen was not pleased.
we're very strongly implying that the queen was displeased *because* the king impregnated the chambermaid. Of course we could go further and just say so:
>The king impregnated his chambermaid, and because of this the queen was not pleased.
but this is a bit laborious and a bit lame, like explaining a joke.

[Anonymous No.18397913]

>>18397216
>>18397677

——— WHY COMMA SPLICES ARE BAD ———

A 'comma splice' is when you join two sentences with a comma instead of a semicolon. So, using our first example, suppose we wrote:

>The king impregnated his chambermaid, the queen was not pleased.

This is bad. Here's the main reason why:

When you use a comma like this you're preparing the reader for a secondary clause which is *not* a new, distinct sentence in its own right. The reader therefore approaches the second clause in a subtly different way — he holds the first in mind and starts parsing the second as a subordinate addition. When he discovers that the second clause can't possibly be interpreted like this, he has to go back and re-evaluate. It's a tiny little hitch in the flow. It's as though the text is saying "think A, then B, then C, then — no, don't think C, think D, then E, then F...". (Two soldiers are trying to defuse a bomb. One is reading the instruction manual to the other. "Cut the blue wire..." he reads. SNIP! goes his friend. "....AFTER cutting the red wire," he continues.)

Returning to our example, when you read

>The king impregnated his chambermaid, the queen —

you will (if you're accustomed to authors who use the language properly) prepare yourself mentally for something like this:

>The king impregnated his chambermaid, the queen not being present and there being little else to do.

This is a *correct* use of the comma because the second part of the sentence — 'the queen not being present and there being little else to do' — is not a sentence in its own right. (Grammar books will say 'it's not an independent clause' or something like that.)

This drawback might appear trivial, but you can read a lot faster and with a lot less effort if the author gets these things right. Also, when we move on to more complicated constructions, where subordinate clauses modify earlier clauses in all sorts of subtle ways, it doesn't just mean the difference of a few microseconds — it means the difference between grasping the thought whole and correct, first time, and not grasping it at all. (Anyone who has read Gibbon's Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire will know what I mean.)

Comma splices are a sure sign of a poorly-educated writer. (The opposite fault — using a semi-colon where a comma is correct — is a sure sign of a half-educated writer who knows vaguely about the first error and is over-compensating.) And if you use comma splices, educated people *will* judge you. To quote David Foster Wallace:

>"In my classes, students had to accept that anyone who did not use the semicolon with Mozartian precision would never get higher than a C."

[Anonymous No.18397920]

>>18393201
Semicolon is not a replacement for comma

[Anonymous No.18397936]

>>18397677
>>18397913

So you *could* just use a full stop where you do use a semicolon, but you might choose not to for the sake of rhythm/flow? It makes sense, just double checking.

[Anonymous No.18397968]

>>18397936
Yes. There are a few other twists and turns, but that's the basic idea. If you're not sure whether to use a semicolon or a comma, just try writing the passage using a full stop. If it's grammatically correct, you should use a semicolon; if it isn't, you should use a comma.

[Anonymous No.18398067]

>>18397913

—————— CORMAC MCCARTHY VERSUS THE SEMICOLON ——————

"Cormac McCarthy hates semicolons, and he's great, so I will continue to use comma splices!"

This argument keeps coming up. Most people would agree:
1. Cormac doesn't like semicolons.
2. He practices what he preaches — he almost never uses them.
3. His writing is great.
4. On the other hand, there are lots of fine writers who do use semicolons.

So who's correct?

Here's how I think of it. When cinema started, all films were black-and-white. Then colour came along. Now, you might think, one or other has to be better, so after a while everyone would be using whatever's better. But that isn't true. Some films are perfect in colour:
>Star Wars
>2001: A Space Odyssey
>Gone With The Wind
Others are perfect in black and white:
>Casablanca
>Citizen Kane
>The Third Man

It's the same in literature. Cormac McCarthy has deliberately restricted himself to a particular grammatical/sonic/rhythmic palette, just as some films restrict themselves to shades of grey. This is perfect for his desired tone & subject-matter. (Many writers use restriction for artistic effect. Damon Runyon wrote all his verbs in the present tense, for example.) But if P.G.Wodehouse tried cutting off all his semicolons he would bleed out in five seconds flat.

CM was correct that a lot of pretentious, amateurish writing could be improved by removing semicolons. But if he said that all semicolons should be expunged from all writing, everywhere, he was wrong. (I doubt he said that, though.)

One other point worth mentioning: Cormac McCarthy *doesn't* use comma splices. (OK, probably there's one or two here and there, but in general, he doesn't.) He simply avoids the sort of sentences where a purist would consider a semicolon necessary. So when he said that a lot of bad writing could be improved by removing the semicolons, he didn't mean "leave everything as it is but change every semicolon to a comma". He meant, "rewrite the sentences so that you *can* remove the semicolons or replace them with commas, but without having any comma splices".

[Anonymous No.18398891]

>>18393201
You used it wrong; that second part was a sentence fragment.

[Anonymous No.18398920]

what's it been, 4 years now? Godspeed duck semicolons poster

[Anonymous No.18399075]

>>18393741
lmao. imagine having an opinion on semi-colons when you don't know how to format dialogue