Words & Stars: Gastric bypass

Kurt Vonnegut is famous for saying many things that he never said (he did not, for example, send around a chain e-mail advocating the use of sunscreen), but in the book A Man Without a Country, he really did say this: "Do not use semicolons.

They are transvestite hermaphrodites representing absolutely nothing."

He could have separated those two sentences with a semicolon, but he did not; and quite rightly so. I just put a transvestite hermaphrodite in that sentence; did anyone notice? Ooh, and there goes another one. Vonnegut would have called this vile blasphemy, and he wouldn't be the only one.

Here's the confusing part. The way I used the semicolon in the first sentence of the preceding paragraph is against the law, but the way I used it in the second sentence is not. According to the law, a semicolon may be used to separate two unrelated sentences, but not when one sentence qualifies the other. "I hate semicolons; they are ugly" is grammatically acceptable, according to the law.

I say the law is an ass. Why on earth would you give a job to a floppy, inefficient punctuation mark when you could employ a strong, honest full stop instead? I hate semicolons. They are ugly. That's much better.

Even the most ardent hater of semicolons must admit, however, that these short-tailed newts of the grammar world are useful in separating items in a list. Usually commas will do, but if there are commas in the items themselves, then things get complicated. For example, "The following items were on the menu: Spam, egg and chips; spam, apples and salad; spam, rice, peas and kumquats ." You get the idea.

Enough of semicolons. Let's talk about the colon. Colonic irrigation is a ritual performed by members of a body-worshipping sect. It is not common among those who belong to the pedant class, because colons are useful organs that should be checked regularly to make sure they are in good health.

There's a sign in the complex where I live that could do with a colonoscopy. Painted on a loud yellow board, it proclaims "Slow children". You'd think the fast ones would be more of a worry. If there were a colon after "slow", the sign would be fulfilling its task as a warning to motorists about short people. But there isn't.

Writing on the Oxbridge Edit blog, grammarian Elly Naylor points out that the colon is allowed to do what the semicolon is not, and that is join (or separate, depending on your point of view) sentences that have something to do with each other. She uses farmyard signs to illustrate the case of the missing colon, although one could argue that "Cows please close gate" and "Chickens keep dogs on leads" could be entirely intentional on a free-range GM farm.

So. Where do colons and semicolons come from, and who on earth would name a punctuation mark after a piece of the digestive tract? It's enough to make one semiquaver.

As it happens, the colon (which makes some irritable when it is put before a closing parenthesis to make a smiley face:) is not the same as the colon through which formerly delicious things pass on their way to a less delicious place.

The punctuation kind of colon comes from Latin. Its literal meaning was a limb, as in the branch of a tree or the leg of a hedgehog, but it was mostly used to describe part of a poem. Catullus wrote poems containing many colons. One can probably infer that a semicolon was, by extension, part of a part of a poem.

The other colon, the one where good meals go bad, comes from the Greek kolon, meaning large intestine. I don't understand why the small intestine got to remain the small intestine while the large intestine got lumbered with colon, but I'd prefer to have the latter spilling its guts on my page, any day. LS

Readers' words

RE: Taxi drivers in Joburg (LS, July 20). I was interested to see that the words "taxi" and "cab" seem to have become interchangeable, whereas before it was only Americans who said "cab", while the rest of the world said "taxi". Both are correct, although the mode of public transport I take to work is hardly ever called a "cab". Both "taxi" and "cab" are shortened versions of "taximeter cab", and "meter", the instrument that measures distance and fare, is short for "taximeter". My mother told me that in the '30s there were "taxi dancers". I think they were women hired to partner lonely men at dances. - Camilla Gumede

One of the most misused words appeared in Prince Valiant last Sunday. That word is "disinterested", which is always wrongly used to mean "not interested". Disinterested actually means "unbiased", and the correct word for having no interest is "uninterested". - Gavin Downes

Wickets were falling like nine-pins in the cricket recently. One was a contentious flick off a glove which went on to strike the shoulder - described by the commentator as the "left-hand shoulder" (it was a left-handed batsman). Is this a South African aberration ? What is wrong with just "left" and "right"? - Chris Gow

Though commonly used, "from whence" is generally considered to be incorrect. The concise "whence" means "from the place" (the inbred world of privilege and class whence they came), "from which source" (take this whence it comes) or "to the place from which" (return whence you came). There is no need to add "from". - Judy Hodson

E-mail your thoughts on words and grammar to degroots@sundaytimes.co.za. On Twitter @deGrootS1