Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

The melancholy decline of the semicolon

unherd.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

61–70 of 260 posts

Re: The melancholy decline of the semicolon

#61

Post by dsr_ »

pwdisswordfish0 wrote: post #48
bsder wrote: post #28

Meh. Grammar, in general, is on a steep suckiness trend. For example, when was the last time you saw someone on the web actually use the correct past tense of "lead (verb, transitive)"?

What is the correct past tense of lead? I thought it was “led”, but I can’t remember having ever read any other form? What often irks me, as a non-native speaker, is the wrong subjunctive (if that’s what it’s called). People say and write all the time “I wish you were there”, when they mean “I wish you had been there”. At least I’m pretty sure that’s how it’s supposed to be…

"I wish you were here" -- in this location, now or in the past.

"I wish you were there" -- at another location, now or in the past.

"I wish you had been there" -- at another location, in the past.

"had been" means that the action is concluded. "were" is for both continuing and concluded actions, and more words are necessary to glark it from context.

Re: The melancholy decline of the semicolon

#62

Post by mdp2021 »

minimilian wrote: post #53
mdp2021 wrote: post #34

I am seeing a use of the instruments that seems quite confused. The semicolon is part of the division of the expression of thought in supersets and subsets of structural affinity: comma, semicolon, period, new paragraph. (Which also means that the semicolon has a necessary role in general: whenever the structure is best defined also using that level of affinity.) The dash, the colon and the brackets are instead relat…

Did you mean `full-stop' in your 2nd paragraph, or are you ascribing a double role to the colon and ignoring the full-stop? According to Fowler (The King's English), there was a time when the difference between , ; : . was merely quantitative (which explains the name `semicolon').

Thank you! Now corrected. Informally: incredibly, one reads and re-reads, edits multiple times in a span of hours, and still leaves errors and imprecisions. Of course it was the period or "full-stop" - in reading, also as I had defined the colon differently in the next paragraph...

By the way, you made me note that 'full-stop' is British English and 'period' is American English. As some of us prefer to write in International English - "OED", or "British spelling with -ize graecisms" in international contexts, I have never considered if there is some solid orientation also about terminology - 'full-stop' vs. 'period', 'lift' vs. 'elevator'...

Re: The melancholy decline of the semicolon

#63

Post by ghkbrew »

pwdisswordfish0 wrote: post #48
bsder wrote: post #28

Meh. Grammar, in general, is on a steep suckiness trend. For example, when was the last time you saw someone on the web actually use the correct past tense of "lead (verb, transitive)"?

What is the correct past tense of lead? I thought it was “led”, but I can’t remember having ever read any other form? What often irks me, as a non-native speaker, is the wrong subjunctive (if that’s what it’s called). People say and write all the time “I wish you were there”, when they mean “I wish you had been there”. At least I’m pretty sure that’s how it’s supposed to be…

"I wish you were here." is grammatically correct in English. And yes it is the "subjunctive mood". Its meaning is closer to "I wish for you to be here" than "I wish you had been here".

This random page I found on the internet has a pretty decent explanation of the subjunctive:

https://www.learngrammar.net/a/examples-of-the-subjunctive-m...

Re: The melancholy decline of the semicolon

#64

Post by __s »

kreeben wrote: post #57
__s wrote: post #47

Semicolons aren't just for high literature: https://serprex.github.io/w/ ; > Semicolons are hot Dash seems a poor substitute. A dash is closer to a period. Semicolons work well for when just using multiple commas would become ambiguous. Shorter sentences also solve that, but sometimes you want a run on sentence, sometimes you want to splice more context in at this very point. & sometimes you just want to drop a conju…

>> at this very point. & sometimes Unless you're a famous writer, isn't that against the law? I thought you're supposed to start a sentence with a capital letter, or can anything follow a hard stop? E.g. is this kosher (?): Microsoft copied Java. .net, they called it. Final question; what if your name is kreeben with a lowercase 'k', is this kosher: Grammar is hard. kreeben does not understand it. ?

That's kosher

Writing has no laws, only rules meant to be broken

English is also a descriptivist language, rather than prescriptivist. ie English has no spec, unlike French (tho you then have French as it is spoken & French as it is specified). As much as Oxford might want to reign it in, they are only cataloging what the collective spews

Examples of miniscule starts: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/of_Montreal where the band's name is always "of Montreal"

Re: The melancholy decline of the semicolon

#65

Post by csee »

boulos wrote: post #2

I'm surprised they didn't mention the controversial Vonnegut advice to never use semicolons (e.g., [1]). [1] https://www.quickanddirtytips.com/education/grammar/vonnegut...

It isn't clear whether his advice here is just humor. This article goes on to explain that he uses semicolons in his own work, even in places where he didn't need to.

Re: The melancholy decline of the semicolon

#66

Post by dsr_ »

forgatmigej wrote: post #51
bsder wrote: post #28

Meh. Grammar, in general, is on a steep suckiness trend. For example, when was the last time you saw someone on the web actually use the correct past tense of "lead (verb, transitive)"?

Some would say that a focus on proper grammar, expansive incorporated linguistical repertoires, and western/anglo-centric style is not inclusive. And I would agree. In line with your example, I have noticed "costed" used instead of "cost" increasingly often.

"costed" is proper when referring to the past action of determining the price for something to purchase. "Last week Sheila costed out the parts list, so it should be accurate."

"priced" is proper for both the past actions of determining the price of something to purchase or something to sell.

"Last week Sheila priced out the parts list, so it should be accurate."

"Last week Sheila priced everything on the shelves."

Re: The melancholy decline of the semicolon

#68

Post by GavinMcG »

kreeben wrote: post #57
__s wrote: post #47

Semicolons aren't just for high literature: https://serprex.github.io/w/ ; > Semicolons are hot Dash seems a poor substitute. A dash is closer to a period. Semicolons work well for when just using multiple commas would become ambiguous. Shorter sentences also solve that, but sometimes you want a run on sentence, sometimes you want to splice more context in at this very point. & sometimes you just want to drop a conju…

>> at this very point. & sometimes Unless you're a famous writer, isn't that against the law? I thought you're supposed to start a sentence with a capital letter, or can anything follow a hard stop? E.g. is this kosher (?): Microsoft copied Java. .net, they called it. Final question; what if your name is kreeben with a lowercase 'k', is this kosher: Grammar is hard. kreeben does not understand it. ?

Those are both fine because they're proper names.

Using "&" in place of the word "and" does depart from common usage (though there's no "law") and does so in such an overt way that it appears pretentious.

Re: The melancholy decline of the semicolon

#70

Post by hairofadog »

peter_retief wrote: post #5

But wait; why not give it, another chance.

I know you’re kidding but golly does comma misuse stop me in my tracks every time. I can slide past almost any other spelling or style error without a second thought, or even crazy autocorrect errors in which, say, the word “mother” has been replaced with “toaster”, but this sort of comma misuse is like nails on a chalkboard to me. And it’s rampant.
Post reply on HN