Eric, You are right. Basically the-semi colon is a stronger comma, and a colon stronger yet. All three tell the reader how long to pause as they go along the sentence.
This is why it is so helpful to read your message out loud to yourself, you can get a feel for how your recipient gets the message. Using good punctuation and other techniques helps get the message from your mind to the reader's mind clearly. I recall years ago there was a series of print ads written by Kurt Vonnegut about these things. It was a great idea and I cut a couple out. Strunk and White's 'Elements of Style' is the classic little book. I also heard of a newspaper 'style' book that is famous (but I can't recall it, maybe the Chicago Trubune) for these little standards of clear writing. Always run a spell checker over your copy too, nothing staggers the transfer of thought like bad spelling forcing the reader to figure out what is really being said. Someone active on the List comes to mind. When I read his stuff I always wonder what he is marinating in. (sorry Yanni, the debil made me do it...) Norm S/V Bandersnatch Lying Julington Creek 30 07.695N 081 38.484W > I seem to remember something about the colon being proper when it precedes > a list of things, but not if the list contains proper complete sentences. > I bet I'm wrong though... > > Eric Thompson _______________________________________________ Liveaboard mailing list [email protected] To adjust your membership settings over the web http://www.liveaboardnow.org/mailman/listinfo/liveaboard To subscribe send an email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] To unsubscribe send an email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] The archives are at http://www.liveaboardnow.org/pipermail/liveaboard/ To search the archives http://www.mail-archive.com/[email protected] The Mailman Users Guide can be found here http://www.gnu.org/software/mailman/mailman-member/index.html
