There has been a good discussion about the use of commas. Do many of you use semi-colons. I don't. I rarely see semi-colons in the contemporary novels that I read. I keep my sentences as short as possible. I find that short sentences add to the pace of dramatic situations. Besides, I try not to force my sentences to do to much.
One thought one sentence - Bertrand Russell
I've been doing an online course which I downloaded called 'Write Great Sentences' and the premise of that course is that long sentences are good sentences. As a fan of Hemingway I initially rejected the idea because I always thought the Hemingway style was short sentences; hence no semi-colons (see what I did there). How wrong I was. Hemingway uses really long sentence and short ones, whichever is most appropriate, and he uses semi-colons. I am not going to argue with the great man so semi-colons (and long sentences) are OK by me. Hemingway's longest sentence? It's 424 words and is in a short story called "Green Hills of Africa" (one of his most famous short stories) It has 4 semi-colons in the one sentence.
How else can we make a winking smiley face?
;)
Someone, somewhere has tried writing Moby Dick* in emojis. Ah, the internet!
*Might have been another book, I was half asleep when I heard about it on radio 4.
Yes, but not too often. Took me ages to work out the difference between a colon and a semi-colon. Clue is in the look of them. two dots, more of same, dot and comma, some extra information. Something like that!