I've been meaning to link to this little article about a much-abused bit of punctuation: the semicolon.
Here's a weird little paragraph worth singling out just because of its weirdness--and the wittiness of the final line (the one in parentheses):
"One of the school system’s most notorious graduates, David Berkowitz, the Son of Sam serial killer who taunted police and the press with rambling handwritten notes, was, as the columnist Jimmy Breslin wrote, the only murderer he ever encountered who could wield a semicolon just as well as a revolver. (Mr. Berkowitz, by the way, is now serving an even longer sentence.)"
What is it about this time of the semester that gets me thinking about punctuation so much more than usual? Ah yes--midterm week, complete with piles of questionably-punctuated papers to grade.
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