Re: American semicolons

Jerry Friedman wrote:
Vinny Burgoo wrote:

An entertaining article/thread/blogpost/whatever they're called about
Godwin's Law at The Blackboard, a climate blog, includes a claim that
Americans 'only use ";" to separate two things that would otherwise
individually qualify as full sentences'. Comment #15342 (by Lucia,
the blog's author):

<http://rankexploits.com/musings/2009/godwins-law-alert-monckton/>

Untrue. We also use them to separate parallel phrases or clauses that
would normally be separated by commas but contain commas as below.

***
Now that I think of it, I think you all will enjoy the fact that this
is supposedly one sentence:

'With tired, tedious mendacity, it recites the UN’s profitable but
baseless mantra that warming of the world’s climate is “unequivocal”;
that the industries and enterprises of humankind are principally to
blame; and that unless World Government mends our ways the planet is
doomed to an ineluctable cascade of difficulties, disasters,
catastrophes, cataclysms, Armageddons, and apocalypses worthier of
St. John the Divine at his most imaginative than of a businesslike
Elliptical Office facing the real and pressing problems that will
shortly arise from the President’s gleeful, Peronistic
Zimbabweanization of what was once the world’s greatest economy.'

Are there any punctuation police here?
***

Comments?

I don't object to the semicolons for clauses that long, though I think
commas would work too.

I think there are several commas missing, but I won't bother with putting them in. Some Rightpondians might disagree.
--
Skitt (AmE)

.

Relevant Pages

  • Re: American semicolons
    ... Americans 'only use ";" to separate two things that would otherwise ... would normally be separated by commas but contain commas as below. ... Divine' if that item had been earlier in the list, ...
    (alt.usage.english)
  • Re: American semicolons
    ... Americans 'only use ";" to separate two things that would otherwise ... individually qualify as full sentences'. ... would normally be separated by commas but contain commas as below. ... I don't object to the semicolons for clauses that long, ...
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  • Re: American semicolons
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