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Fat Sam
Joined: 05 Dec 2005
Location: Gyeonggi-do
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 Posted: Fri Aug 24, 2007 9:34 am Post subject: Semi-colon; when to use |
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I'm reading a book at the moment and a sentence in it hit me as being wrong in some way. It's quoted speech, but I was sure the first part needs a semi-colon instead of a comma. I thought this before reading the second part of the sentence (and thinking that maybe semi-colons in quoted speech were a no-no) which uses a semi-colon but follows it with the word "but".
Personally, I'd be inclined to switch the comma and the semi colon in this sentence, but I'd like to know what the grammarians around here think. My English education tells me that a semi-colon is short for "that's to say" but maybe I'm wrong.
Here's the sentence:
"There are things to work on tomorrow, things to take care of before Birmingham; but we can sort it out on the training pitch and get it right on Saturday."
For anyone who's interested, it's a quote from a novel about Brian Clough when he was Leeds United manager called 'The Damned United' -not a bad book. |
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dogshed
Joined: 28 Apr 2006
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| Posted: Fri Aug 24, 2007 10:06 am Post subject: Re: Semi-colon; when to use |
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| Fat Sam wrote: |
I'm reading a book at the moment and a sentence in it hit me as being wrong in some way. It's quoted speech, but I was sure the first part needs a semi-colon instead of a comma. I thought this before reading the second part of the sentence (and thinking that maybe semi-colons in quoted speech were a no-no) which uses a semi-colon but follows it with the word "but".
Personally, I'd be inclined to switch the comma and the semi colon in this sentence, but I'd like to know what the grammarians around here think. My English education tells me that a semi-colon is short for "that's to say" but maybe I'm wrong.
Here's the sentence:
"There are things to work on tomorrow, things to take care of before Birmingham; but we can sort it out on the training pitch and get it right on Saturday."
For anyone who's interested, it's a quote from a novel about Brian Clough when he was Leeds United manager called 'The Damned United' -not a bad book. |
Here's a guess. If you replace the semicolon with a comma then it looks like a series. Maybe thats why they did it that way.
"There are things to work on tomorrow, things to take care of before Birmingham, but we can sort it out on the training pitch and get it right on Saturday." |
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yingwenlaoshi
Joined: 12 Feb 2007
Location: ... location, location!
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| Posted: Fri Aug 24, 2007 10:43 am Post subject: |
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| Avoid it? That's what I do. |
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Cheonmunka
Joined: 04 Jun 2004
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| Posted: Fri Aug 24, 2007 1:59 pm Post subject: |
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| The semicolon is not two distinct ideas with a similar relationship? |
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Billy Pilgrim
Joined: 08 Sep 2004
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| Posted: Fri Aug 24, 2007 3:21 pm Post subject: |
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I'm off to meet my friend; he's in town for a few days.
I'm not sure what his problem was; I hadn't kissed his girlfriend for more than 3 seconds.
I'm going to get seriously drunk; after that, who knows? |
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Novernae
Joined: 02 Mar 2005
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| Posted: Fri Aug 24, 2007 4:12 pm Post subject: Re: Semi-colon; when to use |
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| Fat Sam wrote: |
| "There are things to work on tomorrow, things to take care of before Birmingham; but we can sort it out on the training pitch and get it right on Saturday." |
Originally I thought it was incorrect because a semi-colon is used to join two independent but related clauses; The use of 'but' would turn one into a dependent clause. However, apparently if the independent clauses are already punctuated by commas or are very long you can use a semi-colon rather than a comma to separate them. Source: http://www.wisc.edu/writing/Handbook/Semicolons.html |
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