what is an acceptable amount of semicolons?
i feel like i use them too often; 31 semicolons in 492 sentences seems like many. 6.3% of my sentences have semicolons in them.
as opposed to the hound of the baskervilles, which has 1.5%.
i'm not in poor company, though. 47.2% of sentences moby dick contain semicolons. that is quite a few semicolons for a 200,000-something-word book.
i wish i could write something that long. someday, dearies, someday. i'll get there.
unrelated: if i ever get a twitter account i will write 140-character haiku and post them.
gnomically.
my livejournal is [link]
my main account is ~rachaelwrites
my formspring is [link]
also commas, my teachers always yell at me for overusing them.
it's so easy to fall into the habit of very similar sentences.
commas. . .so useful for run-on sentences that make my dad yell at me XD
i usually figure they're okay as long as you can still tell what the main point of the sentence is.
in case you hadn't guessed -
also the connecting dash -
for a pause slightly longer...
than a boring old comma.
sigh... ...