Grammar Girl: For Writers and Language Lovers. 518 GG Are You Interurban? Vonnegut's Famous Semicolon Quotation Was Taken Out of Context. Off the Cuff.
May 26, 2016
11:29
ARE YOU INTERURBAN? When you split your time between the East Coast and the West Coast, you can call yourself “bicoastal.” What about when you’re splitting your time between two cities, like a listener named Jeff, who splits his time between New York City and Boston? VONNEGUT'S FAMOUS SEMICOLON QUOTATION. I couldn’t imagine that any talented writer would so universally dismiss an entire punctuation mark. Not one to take things at face value, I went searching and quickly found that the Vonnegut quotation, so often offered with a giddy air of insider superiority, is taken out of context. Here are the details. OFF THE CUFF. Imagine you were wearing an old-time dress shirt. One with stiff, starched, white cuffs. Those cuffs were sometimes several inches long! You could write a lot of notes on something that long. SPONSORS http://amazon.com/kindleforkids http://weebly.com/grammar AMAZON AFFILIATE CODE http://quickanddirtytips.com/amazon FOLLOW GRAMMAR GIRL Twitter: http://twitter.com/grammargirl Facebook: http://facebook.com/grammargirl Snapchat: http://snapchat.com/add/thatgrammargirl Pinterest: http://pinterest.com/realgrammargirl Instagram: http://instagram.com/thegrammargirl LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/grammar-girl
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