;-)

Let us take a trip back to June 2010, when I posted the following:


"Let me note that Kilgore Trout and I have never used semicolons. They don't do anything, don't suggest anything. They are transvestite hermaphrodites."

Just as the semicolon was becoming a vital addition to my writing, Kurt Vonnegut - one of my favourite authors of all time - had to go and ruin it for me. Still, I bow to his superior literary genius, and accept that I'll have to modify my style accordingly. The above quote is from Timequake, which I've just finished rereading. Just one of the many examples of his brilliance.


Back in 2012, I still admire and enjoy Vonnegut a great deal. However, when I penned the above my own writing was still in its formative stages. Almost two years on I'm much more confident, and therefore much more inclined to take on sacred cows. The semicolon is a perfectly useful literary tool in the hands of those who know how to use it; one that can be deployed effectively in order to establish the mood or flow of a sentence, much like commas and full stops can be. Vonnegut was wrong to dimiss it, and wrong to suggest that writers should avoid it at all costs.

It's a stance he reasserted and expounded upon often, further dismissing the semicolon by suggesting that "All they do is show you've been to college." In this sense, his complaint takes on a distinct air of anti-intellectualism for anti-intellectualism's sake. If we accept that he's wrong then the comment becomes nothing more than a cheap shot at the educated, Vonnegut playing to one crowd whilst trying to make another feel foolish. The notion of blacklisting any grammatical device is ludicrous and restrictive, in a way that inhibits writers rather than challenging them. It's no more a valid statement than Stephen King's "don't use adverbs" mantra, but it's more celebrated simply because Vonnegut is held in higher regard by literary critics and "educated" readers (funnily enough), whereas King is more a man of the common people, and thus seen as easier to dismiss.

The point, of course, is that you shouldn't listen to anyone who would attempt to impose barriers on the way you write, or influence you away from certain techniques and devices. Guidelines are fine, and often very useful indeed, but cast iron rules only narrow what can be achieved. Vonnegut may well have been a genius. He even had a great many of the answers. But not all of them.

Links of interest:

Jon Henley considers the semicolon's place in modern literature.
A spirited defense of the semicolon.
An explanation of how and when to use a semicolon.