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Grammar Challenge... Are you up to the task?

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Shecky:
At its most fundamental, a semicolon means that what follows, although a complete thought (i.e., sentence) in and of itself, is tied pretty strongly to the thought preceding it. But it's not just an elucidation of that preceding thought, which would take a colon (e.g., "He only feared one thing: fear itself."), and it's a little more separated from that thought than a comma would indicate. It's not just a continuation; it's sort of a whole thought that is linked to it.

Starbeam:
Yeah, what ^ he said. 

black_hawk_sam:
^
^ Yeah, what they said.

meg_evonne:

--- Quote from: Shecky on May 05, 2011, 09:47:36 PM ---At its most fundamental, a semicolon means that what follows, although a complete thought (i.e., sentence) in and of itself, is tied pretty strongly to the thought preceding it. But it's not just an elucidation of that preceding thought, which would take a colon (e.g., "He only feared one thing: fear itself."), and it's a little more separated from that thought than a comma would indicate. It's not just a continuation; it's sort of a whole thought that is linked to it.

--- End quote ---
OK, this is now cut and pasted into my writing advice quotes.  Shecky now has a file on my computer and "the elucidation of that preceding thought" is added to my list of grammar rules.  This also explains several additional lines from Rankin's book that I also underlined to examine.

To be honest, the MLA intimidates me. Heck, I had to go take a linguistics class (as a 55 year old) in order to understand the terminology in E/S. Proudly, I aced it, but the dang class ended before it reached punctuation, and I never found time to take the next. I tried the internet sources, but most of it is simplistic at best.

Bottom line, whatever I've learned, I still have to USE it. I'm better, but I'm still too lazy or too discombobulated to pay attention or usually too tired to correct properly. *sigh* Looking at this sentence, I know it's not right either. Ah well...

As to the call to rewrite the sentence, what isn't known in this discussion thread is that Rankin uses it in a descriptive section where the 'traditional' means were already used. It was probably chosen to impart info with speed, while not emphasizing it via additional shorter sentences. It is easily understandable to the reader.  Therefore, as communication--it works.

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