Daily Meh is an edited stream of consciousness, by Simen.

Jon Henley on the fate of the semicolon

The Guardian expends a lot of words about the declining use of the semicolon in French.

How, though, are you supposed to use the thing? According to the eminently readable rules of French grammar, the semicolon has several specific applications. First, it allows a writer to introduce a logical balance into a long phrase. Second, it can serve to divide two phrases that are in themselves independent, but whose significance is in some way linked (viz: “The semicolon is necessary; I have just proved it,” or, as Michel Houellebecq, one of the very few contemporary French writers to use the point-virgule, would have it: “He was unable to remember his last erection; he was waiting for the storm.”) …

And, of course, the reasonable view, from Jonathan Franzen:

I love a good semicolon, but this sounds like one of those Literature is Dead! stories that the New York Times likes to run. I’ve never heard from a reader confused by one of my semicolons, and I don’t remember ever throwing a book aside for being semicolon-free.

Methinks they could reduce the entire article to the introductory paragraph and the above.