You guessed it! This guy who has spent his life in an scholastic straightjacket, applying to the nation's most competitive colleges and one Canadian school (only to become disgusted by academia), as well as having entered the newspaper industry, knows all to well the importance of maintaining a Standard Written English.
In fact, I've been offered an chance to take the copyediting internship test at the local Hearst paper today.
Despite this, there is a concept called poetic license, in which the writer, as artist, manipulates the language to further his ends or the ends of the work being created.
In the fiction forum, there is a tendency to keep to a very conservative Strunk and White usage rules regarding commas and semicolons.
Despite this, I have studied some acting, have read Shakespeare, enjoy poetry readings, and with all the poets on this site (yeah that 95% of the members), share an enjoyment of the oral art of poetry reading.
So then, is it alright to say that a comma and a semi-colon not only function to separate similar clauses to different degrees, but also function to give the reader a signal as to how long he or she should read or "breath" in considering a passage? Can the rules be bent? Should they? I, of course, am a beginning writer.
This problem just came up as I was writing.
Also my formal training in the cello accentuates the importance placed on breathing in conveying any artistic piece to an audience.
Thank you,
Alvaro
[This message has been edited by alvaro.alarcon (edited April 01, 2004).]
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