“I like them – they are a three-quarter beat to the half and full beats of commas and full stops. Prose has its own musicality, and the more notation the better. I like dashes, double-dashes, comashes and double comashes just as much. The colon is an umlaut waiting to jump; the colon dash is teasingly precipitous.”
Will Self
Apparently the semicolon is dying out. I’m a big fan of them myself, but Will Self’s description of prose as music today in the Guardian was totally brilliant. Going to see him soon and can’t wait; he’s an absolute character and completely fascinating to listen to, yet somehow worryingly reminiscent of Frankenstein’s monster.
