Ah, grammar

I thank my dear aunt Terry for circulating this most fabulous piece of art. This article so beautifully and hilariously captures what I love so much about grammar; its purpose, its sole reason for being, is to aid us in our omnipresent and cumbersome task of expressing what it is we really mean to say.

How adorable is this description of the much-maligned, and frequently misunderstood, semicolon?

It’s a way of saying to the reader, who is already holding one bag of groceries, here, I know it’s a lot, but can you take another? And then (in the case of William James) another? And another? And one more? Which sounds, of course, dreadful, and like just the sort of discourtesy a writer ought strenuously to avoid. But the truth is that there can be something wonderful in being festooned in carefully balanced bags; there’s a kind of exquisite tension, a feeling of delicious responsibility, in being so loaded up that you seem to have half a grocery store suspended from your body.

Positively brilliant.

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1 Response to “Ah, grammar”


  1. 1 kateandgracie July 8, 2012 at 4:58 pm

    How embarrassing to have no comments. It makes me feel I have to post a comment before I can move on or that “leave a comment” remark WordPress puts on the comment-less blog post will remain there and forever bug me.

    I recently learned it is thought that we are all in different places on the autism spectrum. Since learning that, I have found more and more examples of my behavior that may allow me to be classified in a more ‘advanced’ stage of the spectrum than I previously thought.


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