I enjoyed the semi-colon article (thanks, Nick!) and now this fun quiz (thanks, Dick!)
I'm going to guess that #3 and #1 were joined by semicolons in the original Vonnegut.
#3 because the two clauses seem closely related. I can imagine them being joined with a comma, even.
#1 by process of elimination. In #2 and #4, the second clause repeats some of the words of the first, so their connection is signaled by the word choice, meaning less need for semi-colon.
I look forward to seeing the answers! This would be an interesting activity to do with students when the semi-colon question arises. It would be fun to ask THEM to locate semi-colons in published work (or passages that could use semi-colons) and to make an activity from their selections, too.
Beth
Beth Rapp Young, Ph.D.
Associate Professor
Department of English
University of Central Florida
P.O. Box 161346
12790 Aquarius Agora Dr.
Orlando, FL 32816-1346
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From: Assembly for the Teaching of English Grammar <[log in to unmask]> on behalf of Dick Veit <[log in to unmask]>
Sent: Monday, May 8, 2017 5:24:29 PM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: Slate article on semi-colon frequency in contemporary authors
A little quiz. Below are four passages from Vonnegut. In two of them he joined the clauses with periods; in the other two, with semicolons. (I replaced the semicolons with periods for the purposes of this exercise). In which two do you think Vonnegut used semicolons?
1. "The Kiss" turned the trick. Pat's mind was mush by the time she had finished it.
2. Puritanism had fallen into such disrepair that not even the oldest spinster thought of putting Susanna in a ducking stool. Not even the oldest farmer suspected that Susanna’s diabolical beauty had made his cow run dry.
3. I don’t think it’s a marvelous moral. I simply happen to know what it is.
4. The room was being redecorated. It was being redecorated as a memorial to a man who had volunteered to die.
I'll send the answers in a later post.
On Mon, May 8, 2017 at 12:41 PM, Richard Grant <[log in to unmask]<mailto:[log in to unmask]>> wrote:
Thanks for this, Nick. I had no idea that semi-colon use was so low among authors. I value the option of showing that two independent clauses are bedfellows. What's more, semi-colons are a useful way to vary sentence lengths.
On Mon, May 8, 2017 at 11:16 AM, Nick Carbone <[log in to unmask]<mailto:[log in to unmask]>> wrote:
This might be of use for discussion with students:
http://www.slate.com/blogs/browbeat/2017/05/03/does_using_more_semicolons_make_an_author_more_pretentious.html
--
nick.carbone at gmail dot com
http://ncarbone.blogspot.com<http://ncarbone.blogspot.com/>
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