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Semicolon abuse
Dec. 27th, 2005 10:30 pmIt seems like these days lots of news outlets are concatenating all (usually both) the day's Iraqi news into one article, which then leaves the problem of what to title the article. The popular solution seems to be to mention both stories with a semicolon between, as seen in the recent Peninsula article Soldiers, patients vote; 13 die in Iraq.
As much as I love the sturdy and versatile semicolon, I find it perplexing in these headlines. Semicolons imply but do not state a relationship between the two clauses, so I'm left wondering what precisely the relationship is.
Soldiers, patients vote; 13 die. What's the relationship? At first glance, Justin took it to mean that, while soldiers and patients were voting, 13 of them died in Iraq. Meanwhile I assumed the implied relationship was causal -- perhaps the world's soldiers and patients had approved a referendum to kill 13 Iraqis? OK, neither of our versions makes sense, but the headline shouldn't have left us scratching our heads.
A current Yahoo story takes the cake in semicolon abuse, though: Iraq Shiites Talk With Kurds; Grave Found. I guess the talks didn't go well?
As much as I love the sturdy and versatile semicolon, I find it perplexing in these headlines. Semicolons imply but do not state a relationship between the two clauses, so I'm left wondering what precisely the relationship is.
Soldiers, patients vote; 13 die. What's the relationship? At first glance, Justin took it to mean that, while soldiers and patients were voting, 13 of them died in Iraq. Meanwhile I assumed the implied relationship was causal -- perhaps the world's soldiers and patients had approved a referendum to kill 13 Iraqis? OK, neither of our versions makes sense, but the headline shouldn't have left us scratching our heads.
A current Yahoo story takes the cake in semicolon abuse, though: Iraq Shiites Talk With Kurds; Grave Found. I guess the talks didn't go well?
