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.
- and pronouncing “neural” as if it has four syllables [↩]
i had a whole comment where i rephrased it and used italics and exclamation marks, and then i read your bit about decorum.
spoilsport.
The bit about decorum is more sort of a recommendation. I’d like to see your version, you’re making it sound like Robocop: The Musical.
I got really excited thinking that this post was about Machine Language for computers, I think you should right a post about this as compensation.
I think the Semicolon is correct
*write not right
I’m tired.
That’s the way I getcha, Johnny. I’ll throw together some class of Python-based post at some point, probably. That’ll sort you out.