Archive for February, 2010

Machine language

Published
by
Colm
on 10 February, 2010
in Fun with words
. 5 Comments

Which of these looks right to you:

I have to go; somewhere there is a crime happening.

or

I have to go: somewhere there is a crime happening.

To me, the semicolon seems like “I have to go. Tangentially, somewhere there is a crime happening,” whereas the colon is much more authoritative: “I have to go AND HERE IS WHY”. You could of course make them two independent clauses, but let’s not lose all decorum here.

I don’t know if Robocop even cares about grammar. It seems like he should. I mean, the Terminator can get away with being all curt and barky1 because it doesn’t ever have much it needs to communicate, but Robocop is an officer of the law. You know? He can’t afford to be ambiguous.

  1. and pronouncing “neural” as if it has four syllables [↩]