What Is A Semicolon?

Since then, she never heard from that man, Curley’s wife thought her mother stole the letter. She fought with her mother, who denied stealing the letter from her. “I tell you I ain't used to livin' like this. I coulda made somethin' of myself." She said darkly, ‘Maybe I will yet.’ And then her words tumbled out in a passion of communication, as though she hurried before her listener could be taken away. ‘I lived right in Salinas,’ she said. ‘Come there when I was a kid. Well, a show come through, an' I met one of the actors. He says I could go with that show. But my ol' lady wouldn' let me. She says because I was on'y fifteen. But the guy says I coulda. If I'd went, I wouldn't be livin' like this, you bet.’" (Steinbeck 88) That same night Curley’s wife met Curley and married him to get away from her mother whom she thinks has ruined her chance of becoming a famous Hollywood

Punctuation in the form of commas and dashes is used to slow the pacing of the story and create suspense or an unresolved tone. Poe uses these dashes in “The Tell-Tale Heart” to emphasize the narrator’s madness, allowing the reader to hear and understand the fragmentation of the narrator’s thoughts on a much closer level. This is exemplified in one passage, where the narrator states “TRUE! -- nervous -- very, very dreadfully nervous I had been and am; but why will you say that I am mad? The disease had sharpened my senses -- not destroyed -- not dulled them.” This adds to a jolting tone to the passage, as the narrator begins feverently, represented by exclamation points, then suddenly pauses for extended stretches, then starts again. The long pauses between statements caused by multiple dashes in a row evoke this aforementioned madness, due to the fact that, by normal standards, a “sane” person would not speak with such a disjointed

During the next few weeks Donny had been talking on the phone with this girl Miriam for hours upon hours. She had invited Her over for dinner but Donny said no, Cal let Miriam over for one for the “studying” sessions, They were both always with cal and it started to seem weird to daisy. She “This Miriam was an unappealing girl with blurry lipstick and masses of rough red hair. She wore a short, Bulky jacket that would not have been out of place on a motorcycle. During this trip to Cals she was silent, but coming back, she was more talkative. “What a neat guy and what house. All those kids hanging out, like a club. And the stern playing rock… gosh, he's not like a grown up at all! Married and divorced and everything, but you'd think he was our age.” Miriam had said.” This is the daisy has gotten to think it was all bad and weird for Donny, It had all gone down hill Cal wasn't helping and they were just partying and this girlfriend wasn't the best for him she has thought. She didn't know what to do she didn't think any of this was helping. She should have come out and mentioned it too him about her not loving this girl and not thinking she was the best influence to keep him on track and get his grades up. With them always at Cals partying nothing was getting better, The girl didn't seem like she was all this serious and Daisy knows

McTeague's dream is, "to have projecting from the corner window a huge gilded tooth." That is his ultimate goal, but he is aware this is unobtainable for himself at the moment. The narrator admires this about McTeague, because he is aware that McTeague is fine with his situation now while also knowing that most people in his situation would not handle it as well as McTeague does, as well as have his driving force of a dream. This would no doubt come from the narrator's knowledge that McTeague is slow, young, and even innocent. Although, this is overshadowed by the narrator's admiration in McTeague's content with his situation. In the final line, that slight tone of pity emerges once again. This comes from the author's diction and syntax. The use of a semicolon really shows the pity the author has for McTeague in the second half of the sentence, "but yet such a thing was far beyond his

The main aspect of the poem is the obvious tone shift from lighthearted comedy to contemplating sadness, starting slowly between the second and third stanza and slowly building up more and more as the poem continues. This foil accentuates the emotion of the poem, making the ending all the sadder. This sadness becoming evident in the last stanza of the poem, where the couplet pattern breaks in an

This emphasizes her craving to talk to others. Even though Curley’s Wife gets shut out by the other men, she still is determined to make conversation with others. She looks at the bright side and tries to be cheerful to not let Curley get to her.

Lynne Truss tells the reader that the semicolon is something that will propel thought in a sentence. The difference between a period and a semicolon is that a period means that the two sentences have nothing to do with each other. While the semicolon means that the two sentences have something to do with each other. I relate this to when people get a tattoo of the semicolon to draw attention to mental health. I enjoy the reflation that when someone gets a tattoo of the semicolon they want the same meaning that Truss means that both points of life are important and the event light propelled the next chapter of the person’s life.

Dillard’s use of punctuation is mediocre, for example when she wrote that she “would have died happy, for nothing has required so much of [her] since as being chased all over Pittsburgh in the middle of winter‒running terrified, exhausted‒by this sainted, skinny, furious redheaded man who wished to have a word with [them]” (Dillard p.21). This is a great example of how Dillard uses punctuation, in this case dashes, in a sub-par way. There is not a need to have this sentence phrased how it is, and could be easily re-written to be much easier to understand. Vowell, however, uses dashes in a much better way when she interrupts herself mid sentence, explaining how “[her] father’s sarcastic American history yarns rarely go on for long before he trots out some nefarious ancestor of [theirs]‒[she] come[s] from a long line of moonshiners, Confederate soldiers, murderers, even Democrats‒he cracks that the merchants hired some ‘community-minded Southern soldiers from North Texas’” (Vowell p.17). Vowell’s use of the dash is far superior to Dillard’s, as it is written very well and it is actually useful. Without the dashes and what lies between them, the reader would lose examples of to what extent her dad goes off-topic about their ancestors. Another bad use of punctuation is when Dillard recalls that “the oldest to Fahey boys were there‒Mikey and Peter‒polite blond boys who lived near [her] on Lloyd

Once the rift appears in their fidelity, both of them are very confused. Missie May has been caught by Joe in bed with Otis D. Slemmons, the bragging rich man. Specifically because this offense occurred in the bedroom, it is a threat to their future happiness. If Missie May becomes pregnant with another manís child, Joe will no longer be considered an adequate man, and Missie May will no longer be his. Joe is truly in love with Missie May, and is happy in their marriage ìThat was the best part of life-going

By the time Tom and Casy reunite at the cotton plantation, Tom realizes that he cannot sit and be a silent witness to the world’s injustices. At the plantation, Tom abandons the life of private thought that structures the lives of most of the novel’s male

After reading “Semicolons: A Love Story” by Ben Dolnick, my view and knowledge of semicolons changed. The first thing I learned is that I had no idea someone could write about punctuation by telling a story and relating it to personal experiences. For example, the author begins the article talking about when he was a teenager that he did not pay much attention to semicolons. Over time the author started noticing and was fascinated with how these semicolons were used as well as how he could use them in his own writing. Another thing that I learned was the definition of a semicolon. The author states “a semicolon is used to separate parts of a sentence that need a more distinct break that a comma can signal, but that are too closely connected

Many people might raise the question of why John Steinbeck didn’t give Curley’s wife a name. They might also wonder what her main purpose was in the book. It seemed on the surface that she did nothing to enhance the plot. But when you think about it, Curley’s wife did a lot of things “behind the scenes”.

Edna Millay, in her sonnet, “What Lips,” describes her solitude after spending her life searching for love by having romances with several men. Firstly, Millay asks a rhetorical question: “What lips my lips have kissed, and where, and why” to explain that she has forgotten her past lovers and the reasons they were together; secondly, to provide a visual image of the speaker’s lonely, quiet, and empty state caused by not finding love, Millay states that “the rain / Is full of ghosts tonight, that tap and sigh”; thirdly, Millay uses an oxymoron, “quiet pain,” to explain that although the speaker does not remember her past lovers, the hurt from not finding love still lingers in her; fourthly, Millay provides the image of a “lonely tree” as another

Elena Gonzalez Hoggatt-Abader Engl 101 September 29, 2015 The Demands of Womanhood Society plays a key role in determining how people are supposed to fulfill their roles in society—specifically their gender roles. This means that typically the norm is that men are to be the head of the house and are to be the financial supporters while women are typically categorized as being the homemaker and caretaker. The complexity and importance of being a woman the “right” way is shown through Jamaica Kincaid’s “Girl”, a short story reflecting her growing up in Antigua.

This is by far the most striking aspect of Happy Endings, and even if her opinion goes unnoticed, one can not ignore the framework of this story. There are no paragraphs. There is no beginning, middle end. There is no grand introduction or stunning finale. The lack of form in this work stems from the lack of structure and depth of romantic fiction. Atwood feels this type of writing lacks emotion and conviction and can be easily thrown together and kept together by a few clichés and stereotypes. A hodgepodge of cheesy ideas that are malleable and easily interchangeable. She shakes things up by not organizing the text in sequential order, and events are not connected or presented in a straightforward, chronological order. This is a short story that lacks all the common characteristics of a short story.