/lit/ - Literature

[Anonymous No.21327671]

Stop using semicolons

[Anonymous No.21327677]

Considering how often people nowadays think a semicolon and colon are the same: I agree.

[Anonymous No.21327680]

>>21327671
No; and more to the point, noooooooooooooooooooo.

[Anonymous No.21327686]

>>21327671
Slaughterhouse Five wasn't good enough to make me stop.

[Anonymous No.21327688]

Fuck you; I won't do what you tell me!

[Anonymous No.21327707]

>>21327671
been doing this shit for years; since 15 at the very least; i can't stand those who do not employ it at all, than those who use it a lot; it is what it is. I've never been to college either, and i like women (specifically teenage gals)

[Anonymous No.21327717]

For literary writing semicolons should be more common than periods. Periods are the equivalent strong cadences and should really be reserved for the end of paragraphs (and they shouldn't always be used there either) or strong affective pauses. For expository writing such as this periods are more appropriate.

[Anonymous No.21327723]

That's some of the worst advice I've ever heard; I think I'm going to use semicolons even more now.

[Anonymous No.21327730]

>>21327671
I don't really know the rules for semi-colon use. But I appreciate when an author does. PG Wodehouse is the master of effortless semi-colons.

[Anonymous No.21327755]

>>21327671
Semicolons have a legitimate, if niche, usage. When one is writing a list, and the items of that list contain commas, the semicolon should be used to avoid confusion. However, it is correct that semicolon usage is generally wrong.

[Anonymous No.21327766]

>Do not use semicolons. They are retarded homosexuals addicted to cock. All they do is show you've been to college.
woah, based Vonnegut

[Anonymous No.21327775]

>>21327671
it's strange to me that a famous author would be unable to "hear" the difference between the semicolon and other punctuation marks on the page, because that seems like basic literacy. then again he did come from genre fiction.

[Anonymous No.21327790]

>>21327723
Based; and; redpilled.

[Anonymous No.21327794]

>>21327671
>you've been to college
I dropped out of highschool and use semicolons excessively; deal with it.

[Anonymous No.21327819]

>>21327671
No. ;^)

[Anonymous No.21327840]

>>21327671
This is an out of context quote from Vonnegut. Here's the rest of it.
>Those of us who had imagination circuits built can look in someone's face and see stories there; to everyone else, a face will just be a face.
>And there, I've just used a semicolon, which at the outset I told you never to use. IT IS TO MAKE A POINT THAT I DID IT. The point is: RULES ONLY TAKE US SO FAR, even good rules.
The replies ITT are honestly embarrassing. Everyone on /lit/ should know this phony quote by now.

[Anonymous No.21327854]

>>21327840
Sorry but I don't read books published after 1920.

[Anonymous No.21327884]

>>21327677
Neither a colon nor a semicolon are correct, you should have used a comma.

[Anonymous No.21327916]

Sesardić is a massive pseud, btw.

[Anonymous No.21327923]

I just use them randomly and nobody will ever say shit about it

[Anonymous No.21327956]

>>21327671

[Anonymous No.21327958]

>>21327671
>Semicolons
>show you’ve been to college

Yankee moment. Semicolons are easy to use and allow you to “signpost” the reader to make lists easier to digest and fuse sentences together to trim fat from your writing.

E.g.

I went to the mall. In the mall I acquired a television, which was a flatscreen, some school shoes for my kids which were black and had Velcro instead of laces and some new cooking knives for the kitchen which I think will be good for making salads.

Becomes

“I went to the mall and acquired a television: a flatscreen; some school shoes for the kids -the sort with Velcro instead of laces; and some new cooking knives for the kitchen, which will be good for making salads.”

The American intelligentsia are stuck in an eternal quest to dumb down their culture and the arts to the point where even the most idiotic person can find them accessible, in the name of equality of course; this is so well known that I was able to correctly assume that Vonnegut is an American before looking him up.

[Anonymous No.21327963]

>>21327671
I got a colon you can use right here pal
wait no

[Anonymous No.21327972]

>>21327958
Nothing in that sentence required a use of a semicolon at all and even the use of a dash is overwrought kys.

[Anonymous No.21327978]

>>21327671
I just use them when they FEEL right. Fuck commas!

[Anonymous No.21327979]

>>21327707
based; and redpilled.
semi-colons are aesthetic tho tbqh

[Anonymous No.21327993]

>>21327972
>Nothing in that sentence required a use of a semicolon at all and even the use of a dash is overwrought; kys.
ftfy

[Anonymous No.21328043]

>>21327993
BASED

[Anonymous No.21328057]

>>21327916
Why

[Anonymous No.21328066]

>>21327717
this

>6. Be careful with periods! Only those people who also have long duration of breath while speaking are entitled to periods. With most people, the period is a matter of affectation.

[Anonymous No.21328068]

>>21328066
>!
histrionic beta

[Anonymous No.21328072]

>>21328057
Idk what he's doing elsewhere but in Croatia (his home country) he has started pretending to be some sort of local Jordan Peterson or Ben Saphiro with philosophical credentials. Also had a Youtube talk where he explained continental philosophy is stupid because Hegel once wrote something unscientific.

[Anonymous No.21328081]

>>21327671
Vonnegut fucking sucks; any advice he gives should be inverted.

[Anonymous No.21328087]

>>21328072
>he has started pretending to be some sort of local Jordan Peterson or Ben Saphiro with philosophical credentials
Didn't he base his career on explaining IQ differences between the races. Doesn't sound like the Shapiro/Peterson type

[Anonymous No.21328110]

>>21328087
I guess, but nobody here (Cro) cares about that topic because we don't have any nogs. He started as an analytical philosopher. His last book is about internet censorship and Yugoslavian Marxist philosophers and similar stuff.

[Anonymous No.21328123]

>>21328110
>nobody here (Cro) cares about that topic because we don't have any nogs
I think that's why he writes about it, as a warning

[Anonymous No.21328131]

>>21328110
Croat here. Never heard of him.

[Anonymous No.21328141]

>>21328131
Malo se pojavljuje u nekim recimo intelektualnijim desnim krugovima i raspravama. I ja sam ga tek nakon zadnje knjige počeo primjećivati.

>>21328123
He wrote the book in English and published it in UK.

[Anonymous No.21328147]

>>21327671
No; I like them.

[Anonymous No.21328156]

kek why are there so many Balkanites on this site. You just know Sesardić lurks it too

[Anonymous No.21328170]

>>21328156
lightweight enough for thirdie internet

[Anonymous No.21328194]

>>21328156
Have you ever visited /int/? This isn't an anglo-only site.

>>21328170
t. American with monthly data caps

[Anonymous No.21328201]

>>21327671
I will not; I know how semicolons are used because my skin tone is not brown.

[Anonymous No.21328226]

>>21328194
>Have you ever visited /int/?
Even there Balkanites are overrepresented

[Anonymous No.21328237]

>>21328226
Got any data to back that up?

[Anonymous No.21328260]

>>21328237
Personal impression

[Anonymous No.21328357]

I only use semicolons when coding. Otherwise I'll just use a comma.

[Anonymous No.21328360]

>>21327671
A semi colon is like the upper cut you throw when you feint a hook

If it's convertable into boxing analogies it is valid

[Anonymous No.21328362]

No; fuck you.

[Anonymous No.21328379]

And the Greeks never wrote questions again

[Anonymous No.21328449]

>>21327671
Lol; lmao.

[Anonymous No.21328471]

>>21327671
I will over use semicolons as often as I want;

[Anonymous No.21328476]

>>21327819
>^)
?

[Anonymous No.21328685]

>>21327972
>required
>wanting to reduce everything to be as simple as possible with no shades or gradient; merely black or white all of the time.

Awful mindset. Really the worst thing to come out of America, which is a shame given that it’s a cool country that has given the world a lot of nice stuff.

[Anonymous No.21328695]

The semicolon is the most aesthetic punctuation mark, followed by the apostrophe.

[Anonymous No.21328745]

>>21327671
I will use all the arcane punctuation I want to. Only whitespace and the period provide much utility. Capiche‽

[Anonymous No.21328759]

>>21327979
They're pretty ugly and bloat the sentence.

[Anonymous No.21329630]

>>21328695
You forgot the em dash.

[Anonymous No.21329646]

>>21329630
>t.stirner

[Anonymous No.21329659]

>>21327671
transphobic. cancel this. cancel vonnegut now. do it.

[Anonymous No.21329733]

>>21327671
Why use semicolons when you can just em dash or comma splice (like Corncob does on literally the first page of Blood Meridian)?

[Anonymous No.21329741]

>>21327958
Your second sentence is atrocious.

[Anonymous No.21329752]

>>21328068
More like emotive alpha. The modern aversion men have to exclamation points is a sign of their general lethargy and feebleness. Being unfeeling means you're repressed and cowardly, not alpha.

[Anonymous No.21329760]

>>21329733
Comma splices are the best. I've noticed French writers use them all the time. Whoever decided they're incorrect is an idiot.

[Anonymous No.21329846]

>>21327671
No

[Anonymous No.21329886]

>>21327688
MOTHERFUCKERRRR! Uh! Uh! Uh!

[Anonymous No.21329941]

>>21327671
tl;dr

[Anonymous No.21330028]

>>21327671
Considering how often people nowadays think a semicolon and colon are the same: I agree.

[Anonymous No.21330806]

>>21327993
KEK

[Anonymous No.21330810]

>>21327671
>twatter screenshot

[Anonymous No.21330813]

>>21327958
I prefer the second one.

[Anonymous No.21330844]

>>21327671
no

[Anonymous No.21330870]

>>21327671
>imagine taking advice from a dude who panders to retards

If anyone is a popular writer, this just means their words are harmless enough for people not to hate them. The only reason they tolerate you is because you're not a threat. The only reason they respect you is because you coddle them and pander to them. Having an audience is literally a symptom of subhumanism. Having an audience means you pander enough to weak-willed spinless people looking to prop up their fragile ego with whatever bullshit you're trying to peddle.

Being a "successful writer" is nothing more than being a swindling con-artist abusing people with confidence tricks, tricking gullible and stupid people into trusting you. Seeing a successful writer is like witnessing a man who is an autistic savant at agreeably molesting retarded children. Even the Unabomber did this, he just found a very small group of retards who loved getting their fantasies and delusions coddled and stroked by his rhetorical molestation.

>be person
>reading
>willingly pursuing rhetorical molestation

It's fucking gay, bro. I only write because this is clearly disagreeable rhetorical molestation as an act of asserting dominance, not of some attempt to pander to people by giving them agreeable rhetorical molestation. That's the difference between being a home invasion competitive rapist and a sweet-talking child groomer. Every author that you schlomos clap for on here is the latter, because if they weren't, you've be fucking crying and hating the author even after reading a few pages.

[Anonymous No.21330872]

>>21327671
Based. They're disgusting, dissonant little things.

[Anonymous No.21330887]

>>21327671
tl;dr

[Anonymous No.21330902]

>>21327671
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[; No.21330911]

>>21327671
No

[Anonymous No.21331531]

>>21327671
Println(“no”);

[Anonymous No.21331548]

how can a hermaphrodite be a transvestite?

[Anonymous No.21331782]

>>21330870
I'm in tears holy kek

[Anonymous No.21331791]

>>21327671
See >>21327958


>>21327840
>I was just pretending to be retarded.
This is the guy that whinged about having an excessively large dong like it was a curse in every book. Anything he's ever said of use boils down to:
>I crib from Pancakes Breece

[Anonymous No.21331848]

>>21327671
all punctuation marks—except the em dash—are cringe and onions—no—i won't elaborate—

[Anonymous No.21331887]

>>21328066
He's not talking about the punctuation mark.

[Anonymous No.21331895]

>>21330870
Unironically one of the best things I've read all day, and will stick with me for a long while. Thank you.

[Anonymous No.21331974]

>>21331887
shit, you're right, it makes way more sense with rhetorical period. i unironically thought he meant the pm and posted the quote a couple of times on /lit/ to btfo anons. this must be the power of my half-education.

[Anonymous No.21331979]

Lmao, when you are a writer but never opened a grammarbook in your life

[Anonymous No.21331985]

>>21331848
They really need to stop publishing every piece of scrap paper that Dickinson wrote on.

[Anonymous No.21333073]

>>21327671
I love Vonnegut's plots but his prose is abhorrent; that's all.

[Anonymous No.21333119]

>>21327671
Semi-colons are useful for many things. One of their best uses is when you're writing a list and want to give an explanation to each element in the list, then you can use ";" as a separator for the things in the list and "," for the separator between the thing and the explanation. For example:
>"I need to buy oranges, because they're tasty; apples, because they're healthy; alcohol, because I'm miserable; and juice, because I want it."
Compare with
>"I ned to buy oranges, because they're tasty, apples, because they're healthy, alcohol, because I'm miserable, and juice, because I want it."
The first is clearly the better way to structure it.