- By Jim Evans
- Entertainment
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Smart Talk
by Dr. Ced Riley
SEMICOLON: At the Institute for the Linguistically Impaired, we don't spend much time fixing patients' punctuation. We have enough to do getting them to say nuclear, not nucular.
But the other night, while quaffing a schooner of sarsaparilla in the Fowler Lounge, I had a thought. And no, it wasn't my first of the day. Thought, I mean.
The colon began its life in English writing as a double period. If a period were a full stop, a colon was a stop and rest, so to speak.
Wouldn't that now mean that a period should be called a semicolon? After all, it's half a colon.
And as to that period over a comma thing we call a semicolon, shouldn't we apply simple logic and name it a three-quarter colon?
Yes, it's sarsaparilla. Honestly. And no jokes about lapsing into a comma. A former patient has already used that as a book title.
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