The semi-colon

The semi-colon's place in my life is interesting. As someone who frankly didn't give a toss about writing anything in school the rules of semi-colon use passed me by with, I would have to say, no apparent negative impact on my life. More recently, I think either when writing my college Thesis or when I was doing my professional practice exams report I had to use the damn things. I asked my brother, who lets just say knows about such things, about the correct usage of this little grammatical pause (or possibly half pause?)When the lecture finished days later I had retained a little of the fundementals and embarked upon a new semi-coloned life with renewed vigour. As I used it with increasing frequency in long winded legal reports, snotty letters, planning appeals and the like in the following years I began to get rather obsessed with using what I now considered to be this little essential piece of punctuation whatever it is thingy. It became all-consuming this desire to include multiple semi-colons in my written work. I felt my letters etc never reached the required level of condescention unless sentences were at least 5 lines long with at least 4 semi-colons used to up the intellectual level. Then recently I had to use one of the little buggers in a situation that was beyond my level of semi-colonic expertise and had to contact the literary one again for advice. (I think it may have been something to do with capitals or some such reasonable question. I was treated like a leper by he who knows about words. It was clear that my usage had become complacent and confused. I had it seems been taking the little things for granted, assuming I knew how to use them. But no, no more will I flourish them around in my tomes; they will not grace my written work any more; I will not use them again for fear of further humiliation; I am free.

(In Dertopia the use of the semi-colon is compulsory)

Just bloody well pay

Why won't people just pay? If you commission something to be done for you and it is done correctly, pay for it within the payment terms agreed. Don't invent reasons not to; don't get amnesia about what you asked for; don't try and change the terms; just pay. If you can't afford it don't commission it. (In Dertopia everyone would pay).