April 27, 2022 Add as a preferred source on Google Add as a preferred source on Google Colons and semicolons are the indie rock of punctuation marks. They’re not mainstream-popular like the period.

It is a piece of punctuation that has divided writers and authors for centuries. Novelists including Virginia Woolf and Jane Austen have not shied away from using them, but that has not stopped ...

In the delightful Semicolon: The Past, Present, and Future of a Misunderstood Mark, Cecelia Watson, a historian and philosopher of science, takes readers through a lively and varied “biography” of the ...

Writers and editors don’t always agree; really, they don’t. There was a time, years ago, when I was an editor at the now defunct Times-Union that I made some changes — necessary, I’m sure — to a story ...

I've talked about colons more than once in this column, but my focus is usually limited in scope. I zoom in on the little questions, like how many spaces to put after a colon and whether it should be ...

A recent study has found a 50% decline in the use of semicolons over the last two decades. The decline accelerates a longterm trend: In 1781, British literature featured a semicolon roughly every 90 ...

Roslyn Petelin does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond ...