Mr. ;

Originally posted March 11, 2009.

Good morning class, today we are going to explore the intricacies and nuances of one of my very favorite punctuation marks; a little friend of the literary world that I like to call Mr. Semi-colon.

The Semi-colon was first use by a Mr. Ben Jonson in 1591 after his 4th grade teacher had been constantly scolding him for not dotting his lower case i�s and j�s. In an extreme overcompensation, Ben decided to play it safe and dot every character in his paper in order to keep from repeating his past failure. Upon reading his paper, the teacher was immediately flustered by the boy�s excessive dotting but was suddenly calmed and even excited upon reaching Ben�s first dotted comma. It just seemed to fit so well as a means for pausing in a sentence; and thus, the Semi-colon was born.

Since that fateful day in 1591, the Semi-colon�s popularity has sky-rocketed to unimaginable heights. It is estimated that semicolons are used 6.023 x 10