Kurt Vonnegut

[jekylljuice]

Originally Posted by Ditchy McAbandonpants

Actually, just ignore me, because I might not even be making the slightest bit of sense. Here's a site I was just looking at to try and explain this; it didn't clear things up totally, but there's a little punctuation usage quiz at the bottom which might help. I empathise with you, though; whatever Kurt said, I'm too set in my semicolon-using ways to stop now...

Well, I took the quiz and got 24 out of 27, so aside from a few hiccups I think I generally have the right idea. But dang, people make them sound so confusing. That link was a tad more straightforward, so thanks for providing it.

As punctuation marks go, dashes are something very near and dear to my heart - I've never had any real confusion over where to apply them, and they've always felt somewhat natural, making the writing flow in the manner of speech - though they usually get frowned upon whenever I include them in my essays, gramatically correct or not. Most tutors I've met view them as waste of space - instead of using them to conjoin a sentence, I should simply stop and start a new one. But ack ----------- it just can't be done.

And yeah, my apologies to all Kurt Vonnegut fans who are getting frustrated with us flooding his memorial thread with our punctuation woes. But fair's fair, when he made that rather bold statement about semi-colons, he must have been aware that such debates would inevitably be part of his post-humous legacy.