The other day, I was in the middle of writing when a very usual thing happened, namely that I stopped writing and started fooling around on Wikipedia. After several exciting and eclectic tangents in my quest for arcanely superfluous knowledge, I ended up at the history of the semicolon, which contained the following statement:
"The semicolon is frequently considered to be the greatest of the punctuation marks, primarily due to its supposed ability to encompass all other punctuation in one simple yet elegant symbol."
I was stunned by the profundity of implications contained within that sentence. Wiki, being the mostly-good-natured bastion of attempted collective objectivity that it is, had the statement excised within the week.
In my opinion, objectivity certainly has its uses, but can't we leave a little room for these kinds of impulsive, ecstatic flourishes? I know, the person who wrote that probably didn't go out collecting empirical data on which punctuation marks people find most stimulating, and the whole concept of 'greatest of the punctuation marks' is an arbitrary proclamation, but really, can anyone deny that the semicolon is seething with fantastic, almost sexual appeal? (I mean, at least to the extent that Academia as a whole is swimming in a pool of its own seductive fluids?) Besides, where would Wiki be without this kind of shameless, unforgiving enthusiasm for the trivial and the technical?
While I was saddened by its removal (censorship??), I reflected that perhaps the world simply isn't ready for such ideas. As Vonnegut said (wikiquotes), semicolons are the "transvestite hermaphrodites" of punctuation: they are neither here nor there, but somewhere just a notch outside your experience. One may feel that he or she ought to do something with them, but cannot shake the uncertainty that whatever that thing is it inevitably will not quite gratify the boundless and enigmatic elegance of the symbol.
My point is this: just as you shouldn't knock something you don't understand, you also shouldn't knock someone else just because they don't understand. Comprehension isn't everything: it is less than you think (or ideally, the same amount), and one can only presume that he/she comprehends another's (in)comprehension.
Wait... that wasn't my point at all.
And if you're disconcerted by the fact that I was so affected by this passage that I felt the need to write this, you should also know that immediately after reading it I was convulsed to write a page-long Ode to the Semicolon, an excerpt of which appears here:
"Yea, beloved Semicolon,
how thy whimsy doth stir my gentle heart
'twixt gentle pause and sudden egress,
how thy subtleties doth render naught
but all drawne breath encompassed;
thence am I humbled by Thee..."
"The semicolon is frequently considered to be the greatest of the punctuation marks, primarily due to its supposed ability to encompass all other punctuation in one simple yet elegant symbol."
I was stunned by the profundity of implications contained within that sentence. Wiki, being the mostly-good-natured bastion of attempted collective objectivity that it is, had the statement excised within the week.
In my opinion, objectivity certainly has its uses, but can't we leave a little room for these kinds of impulsive, ecstatic flourishes? I know, the person who wrote that probably didn't go out collecting empirical data on which punctuation marks people find most stimulating, and the whole concept of 'greatest of the punctuation marks' is an arbitrary proclamation, but really, can anyone deny that the semicolon is seething with fantastic, almost sexual appeal? (I mean, at least to the extent that Academia as a whole is swimming in a pool of its own seductive fluids?) Besides, where would Wiki be without this kind of shameless, unforgiving enthusiasm for the trivial and the technical?
While I was saddened by its removal (censorship??), I reflected that perhaps the world simply isn't ready for such ideas. As Vonnegut said (wikiquotes), semicolons are the "transvestite hermaphrodites" of punctuation: they are neither here nor there, but somewhere just a notch outside your experience. One may feel that he or she ought to do something with them, but cannot shake the uncertainty that whatever that thing is it inevitably will not quite gratify the boundless and enigmatic elegance of the symbol.
My point is this: just as you shouldn't knock something you don't understand, you also shouldn't knock someone else just because they don't understand. Comprehension isn't everything: it is less than you think (or ideally, the same amount), and one can only presume that he/she comprehends another's (in)comprehension.
Wait... that wasn't my point at all.
And if you're disconcerted by the fact that I was so affected by this passage that I felt the need to write this, you should also know that immediately after reading it I was convulsed to write a page-long Ode to the Semicolon, an excerpt of which appears here:
"Yea, beloved Semicolon,
how thy whimsy doth stir my gentle heart
'twixt gentle pause and sudden egress,
how thy subtleties doth render naught
but all drawne breath encompassed;
thence am I humbled by Thee..."