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The melancholy decline of the semicolon

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Re: The melancholy decline of the semicolon

#241

Post by rrrrrrrrrrrryan »

cryptonector wrote: post #208
emmelaich wrote: post #194

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The trouble is you get advice in a context, and that context might not be known. The context for your advice is that writing long sentences is/was popular poor style. Especially for young and new readers of English.

My observation is that in Romance languages writers (and readers, presumably!) like to create long sentences with lots of sub-clauses. It's almost a game where you have to read the whole 50 word sentence before you can parse it fully, having to push onto a mental stack quite a lot of state that you can only pop at the very very end. So in Romance languages one often finds sentences as long as entire paragraphs are in…

> Usually I write sentences as they pop into my mind, then I edit them down into more numerous, shorter sentences.

This is interesting to me, because I do the exact opposite. I write my clauses more or less independently, then try to string the related clauses together with linking words punctuation in a way that flows naturally.

I can't imagine composing long, complex sentences on the fly, and the only people I've seen that manage to do this in conversation are unusually erudite.

Re: The melancholy decline of the semicolon

#242

Post by mdp2021 »

paulcole wrote: post #239
denton-scratch wrote: post #226

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I use semi-colons in coversational writing. Also, it so happens that I wear a fedora. It's not an affectation, it's just a felt hat. My natural scalp insulation started to fall out a decade or so ago, so I started wearing beanies. But now I feel much more at home under a fedora - apart from anything else, the hat works as a sort of miniature umbrella.

I mean yes, this is exactly what I’m talking about. Use semi-colons if you want and wear a fedora if you want, but understand the image you’re putting out into the world if you do.

Whereas, how would you evaluate the image you would project, by not using semicolons (or anything that would fall into this matter of use, appropriateness and possible reactions) when appropriate, or by refusing to do it to follow the use of some not better defined writers, or for fear of the judgement of some very generically mentioned public?

Which kind of public are you courting?

Re: The melancholy decline of the semicolon

#243

Post by vidarh »

EMM_386 wrote: post #240
vidarh wrote: post #233

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I tend to solve that by wrapping inane APIs. At most I deal with ridiculous names and other API-brokenness once.

> I tend to solve that by wrapping inane APIs. That is just another layer of abstraction which leads to even more confusion. These abstractions can be taken to the extreme in things like Java, that's how you end up with a class named "InternalFrameInternalFrameTitlePaneInternalFrameTitlePaneMaximizeButtonWindowNotFocusedState". If you wrap that in a new interface "IFIFTPIFTPMBWNFS" or even "crazyFrameStuff" (ridiculo…

No, I end up with classes like that because when I wrap APIs the point is to simplify, so I simplify. Though that is a last effort if ditching the broken API entirely isn't an option - e.g. if it's a third party API we can't avoid. That is rare to begin with.

You're free to find Intellisense etc. useful. I just don't. I go to great lengths to have an uncluttered view of the code when I work, because I find it far more preferable to focus on just the code. I'm not against it in principle - I've just not seen any solutions like that which works for me. I don't tend to need to look up methods much; when I work on a piece of code I tend to hold the APIs in memory pretty effortlessly, so that's just not much of a consideration.

I spent years actually looking at implementing visual languages because I liked the idea of providing more contextual information and views of information flows etc. to aid development, but I've yet to find something that works better for me than an uncluttered view of the text.

Re: The melancholy decline of the semicolon

#244

Post by jmnicolas »

delecti wrote: post #175
jmnicolas wrote: post #157

Fun fact: the semicolon won't decline soon in France (and a few other countries I think): it's what we use instead of commas for CSV files! However I never use it when writing anything, I'm not even sure what's its usage.

I think Germany does that as well. It was very confusing to inherit code that "accepted CSVs", but didn't accept files where the values were comma-separated.

Because we use the comma instead of the dot for decimal numbers. Since the advent of computers it's a bit less true, dots are used too but this is the historical reason.

Re: The melancholy decline of the semicolon

#245

Post by KajMagnus »

ghoomketu wrote: post #153
mac-chaffee wrote: post #128

I use them a lot to control the tone of what I write. Since periods can indicate a serious or angry tone[1], I often need some other way to indicate a separation between two complete sentences. For example: "It looks like you forgot to do X; that's needed to do Y." Using a period could be perceived as anger, but using a comma would make that sentence a comma splice. [1] https://youtu.be/fS4X1JfX6_Q?t=3m3s

Wow never really knew this. I guess you need to have deep understanding of the language and maybe have English as your mother tongue to pick up on such things. No wonder text is so emotionless and people misread and get angry about what they think it means all the time. Yet, nobody misreads the tone of your voice or facial expressions. Like in India we have a very common expression "I'm writing to intimate you.." whi…

> maybe have English as your mother tongue

Or Swedish :- ) Semicolon works in the same way, in Swedish. I think I didn't know much about the semicolon, though, until I had read a few books (in Swedish) about writing books (in Swedish).

Maybe most Latin languages? Oh not Greek. Hmm interesting how it works in Arabic, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Semicolon

Re: The melancholy decline of the semicolon

#246

Post by cryptonector »

rrrrrrrrrrrryan wrote: post #241
cryptonector wrote: post #208

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My observation is that in Romance languages writers (and readers, presumably!) like to create long sentences with lots of sub-clauses. It's almost a game where you have to read the whole 50 word sentence before you can parse it fully, having to push onto a mental stack quite a lot of state that you can only pop at the very very end. So in Romance languages one often finds sentences as long as entire paragraphs are in…

> Usually I write sentences as they pop into my mind, then I edit them down into more numerous, shorter sentences. This is interesting to me, because I do the exact opposite. I write my clauses more or less independently, then try to string the related clauses together with linking words punctuation in a way that flows naturally. I can't imagine composing long, complex sentences on the fly, and the only people I've s…

It may just be a cultural / linguistic thing. In Romance language cultures, long sentences are a given.

Re: The melancholy decline of the semicolon

#247

Post by paulcole »

mdp2021 wrote: post #242
paulcole wrote: post #239

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I mean yes, this is exactly what I’m talking about. Use semi-colons if you want and wear a fedora if you want, but understand the image you’re putting out into the world if you do.

Whereas, how would you evaluate the image you would project, by not using semicolons (or anything that would fall into this matter of use, appropriateness and possible reactions) when appropriate, or by refusing to do it to follow the use of some not better defined writers, or for fear of the judgement of some very generically mentioned public? Which kind of public are you courting?

Write with semicolons or wear a fedora and I can make a few (likely accurate) guesses about who you are. Either you’re OK with giving off those vibes or not.

Personally, I’m not. So I’d rather just not use semicolons.

Re: The melancholy decline of the semicolon

#248

Post by soledades »

comeonseriously wrote: post #143
soledades wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No find and replace, either? ;)

I use those. But how would those be automated exactly? How would they know what I want to find and replace?

You tell it what you want to find and replace with and then it automates the rest.

My point being that where you draw the line between what you consider automated vs not is pretty arbitrary.

Re: The melancholy decline of the semicolon

#249

Post by mdp2021 »

paulcole wrote: post #247
mdp2021 wrote: post #242

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Whereas, how would you evaluate the image you would project, by not using semicolons (or anything that would fall into this matter of use, appropriateness and possible reactions) when appropriate, or by refusing to do it to follow the use of some not better defined writers, or for fear of the judgement of some very generically mentioned public? Which kind of public are you courting?

Write with semicolons or wear a fedora and I can make a few (likely accurate) guesses about who you are. Either you’re OK with giving off those vibes or not. Personally, I’m not. So I’d rather just not use semicolons.

> guesses about who you are

Someone who uses instruments properly and competently?¹

You have chosen different vibes: you have not just avoided some, you have embraced others. "Conformist" has not, historically, been used as a compliment.

Within epistemology, if researchers had put "group adherence" before "truth adherence", humanity - very loosely speaking - would still be using epicycles, ignore bacteria, use for the subatomic newtonian equations (which would not exist, because of course "distant action is unthinkable") etc.

So, here is one profile you could guess: someone who knows that distributions are bell curves instead of slopes - the extreme is less frequent than the median -, so someone who knows that "common sense" expresses a wish, when replacing the proper expression "good sense". So, someone who tries to carry on one's work objectively irregardless (and often in spite) of spurious fads and trends.

--

¹Provided, of course, such is the case.

Re: The melancholy decline of the semicolon

#250

Post by erik_seaberg »

phoe-krk wrote: post #32
Sebb767 wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Clearly Lisp is the actual source of all evil ;)

A semicolon in Lisp starts a comment. Despite how bad some comments can be, I kinda doubt comments are the source of all evil in general.

To be fair, it can be a bit terrifying to read a Lisp form that even the author thought required a comment.
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