semicolon in a series

[y0om4a]

Is this proper grammar: "I went to a grocery store, a movie store, which
had a new movie; and a clothing store, which is located near the mall.

[Dr Nick]

I'm not certain it's stricly "grammar" as distinct from "style", but
whichever, my preference is to use semicolons in lists when the items
are long or contain commas. The key thing though is to be consistent
which you haven't been. I'd say:

"I went to a grocery store; a movie store, which had a new movie; and a

clothing store, which is located near the mall."

As you've seen, these are the circumstances in which a comma (for which
read semicolon here) before the "and" helps as well. I don't use one by
default but would keep it here.

[Eric Walker]

On Sun, 17 Jun 2012 21:26:51 -0700, y0om4a wrote:

> Is this proper grammar: "I went to a grocery store, a movie store, which
> had a new movie; and a clothing store, which is located near the mall.

It isn't a matter of "grammar". But no, it is not proper: what is wanted
is--

I went to a grocery store; a movie store, which had a new movie; and a

clothing store, which is located near the mall.

The general form is "blah blah A; B; C; D; and E."

The form is used when the individual terms of the series are complex, and
especially when they are sufficiently complex to want internal
punctuation by commas.


--
Cordially,
Eric Walker

[fabzorba]

One of the telltale signs of slovenly writing by a lazy amateur is the
abundant use of brackets (you can see many instances in Wikipedia),
but they do have legitimate applications, and one of those is in such
circumstances as in the example being considered. Interpolations which
take the form of asides that do not bear directly on the main flow of
thought, are best delimited by brackets. In many - perhaps most -
cases, they are better given their own space elsewhere; in others,
they are better shown separated by hyphens, as may be seen in this
sentence.

Thus:
I went to a grocery store, a movie store (which was screening a new
movie) and a clothing store near the mall.

(I have cleaned up the text a little further in other respects.) The
use of semi colons in the above is NOT warranted, as the individual
members being itemized are NOT complex entities.

myles [mr curly would advise you NOT to use curly quotes in these
cases, no matter how much you like them...] paulsen

[Don Phillipson]

"Eric Walker" <em...@owlcroft.com> wrote in message
news:jrmj8e$a5e$1...@dont-email.me...

This example is defective according to current style books which
recommend that such lists should be
-- preceded or introduced by a semicolon and
-- punctuated by commas.
The function of the semicolon is different: mainly to enable another
main verb within the same sentence.

--
Don Phillipson
Carlsbad Springs
(Ottawa, Canada)

[Odysseus]

In article <jrni07$591$2...@speranza.aioe.org>,

"Don Phillipson" <e9...@SPAMBLOCK.ncf.ca> wrote:

> "Eric Walker" <em...@owlcroft.com> wrote in message
> news:jrmj8e$a5e$1...@dont-email.me...
> > On Sun, 17 Jun 2012 21:26:51 -0700, y0om4a wrote:
> >
> >> Is this proper grammar: "I went to a grocery store, a movie store, which
> >> had a new movie; and a clothing store, which is located near the mall.
> >
> > It isn't a matter of "grammar". But no, it is not proper: what is wanted
> > is--
> >
> > I went to a grocery store; a movie store, which had a new movie; and a
> > clothing store, which is located near the mall.
> >
> > The general form is "blah blah A; B; C; D; and E."
> >
> > The form is used when the individual terms of the series are complex, and
> > especially when they are sufficiently complex to want internal
> > punctuation by commas.
>
> This example is defective according to current style books which
> recommend that such lists should be
> -- preceded or introduced by a semicolon and

Never! Where introductory punctuation is wanted for a list, it should be
a colon. But I don't consider any such signal necessary in the example
above.

> -- punctuated by commas.
> The function of the semicolon is different: mainly to enable another
> main verb within the same sentence.

Hmmm ... now I suspect you did mean to write "colon" above. At any rate,
I'm sure I've seen style-guides that agree with the practice Eric
recommended above (although I can't necessarily vouch for their
currency).

--
Odysseus

[Odysseus]

In article
<52d2addd-37d7-45ed...@t1g2000pbl.googlegroups.com>,

fabzorba <myles....@gmail.com> wrote:

> > On Sun, 17 Jun 2012 21:26:51 -0700, y0om4a wrote:
> > > Is this proper grammar: "I went to a grocery store, a movie store, which
> > > had a new movie; and a clothing store, which is located near the mall.

<snip>

> One of the telltale signs of slovenly writing by a lazy amateur is the
> abundant use of brackets (you can see many instances in Wikipedia),
> but they do have legitimate applications, and one of those is in such
> circumstances as in the example being considered. Interpolations which
> take the form of asides that do not bear directly on the main flow of
> thought, are best delimited by brackets. In many - perhaps most -
> cases, they are better given their own space elsewhere; in others,
> they are better shown separated by hyphens, as may be seen in this
> sentence.

For that purpose hyphens are acceptable in a typescript(*), but dashes
should be used in any typeset text: either unspaced em-dashes or spaced
en-dashes. Material offset in this matter is still parenthetical WRT the
sentence's main structure, but not de-emphasized as it would be in
parentheses.

> Thus:
> I went to a grocery store, a movie store (which was screening a new
> movie) and a clothing store near the mall.

From this one might infer that all three stores were near the mall,
while in the OP only the clothing store is so identified. Your tactic of
'simplifying by parenthesis' is well worth considering in many cases,
but here I'd rather see the semicolon-delimited form than two (or more)
elements accompanied by parenthetical qualifiers.


*) Two or three consecutive hyphens in a traditional typescript
represent respectively an en-dash or an em-dash. But the latter is
unwieldy, and the publisher's house style will likely prevail regardless
of the author's choice. Certainly where the text isn't destined for
typesetting, and especially when it's expected to be displayed in a
fixed-width font, spaced hyphens (as in your example above) are
perfectly acceptable. In Usenet and e-mail messages I use spaced hyphens
for en-dashes (but rarely) and spaced double hyphens for em-dashes;
elsewhere I use the proper characters -- the option-hyphen and
option-shift-hyphen come readily to my Mac-trained fingers. (Likewise
for quotation marks, apostrophes, accented letters, &c.)

--
Odysseus

[Eric Walker]

On Mon, 18 Jun 2012 21:16:31 -0600, Odysseus wrote:

[...]

> Hmmm ... now I suspect you did mean to write "colon" above. At any rate,
> I'm sure I've seen style-guides that agree with the practice Eric
> recommended above (although I can't necessarily vouch for their
> currency).

The Chicago, 14th, says at 5.59:

When the elements in a series are long and complex, or involve internal
punctuation, they should be separated by semicolons.

Curiously, it repeats almost those exact words at 5.94, but adds some
specimen examples:

When the elements in a series are long and complex or involve internal
punctuation, they should be separated by semicolons for the sake of
clarity.

Note the dropping (incorrect, I'd say) of the comma after "complex".


--
Cordially,
Eric Walker

[Stan Brown]

On Sun, 17 Jun 2012 21:26:51 -0700, y0om4a wrote:
>

> Is this proper grammar: "I went to a grocery store, a movie store, which
> had a new movie; and a clothing store, which is located near the mall.

The comma after "grocery store" should be a semicolon.

However,

"a movie store, which had a new movie" is kind of silly. Unless it's
a store that sells only used movies, *of*course* it will have not
just *a* new movie but many. And if it sells only used movies, why
not call it a used-movie store? (Is "movie store" usual where you
live? Around here it would be a video store, if such things existed
any more.)

For "a clothing store, which is located near the mall", why not
substitute "a clothing store near the mall"?

--
"The difference between the /almost right/ word and the /right/ word
is ... the difference between the lightning-bug and the lightning."
--Mark Twain
Stan Brown, Tompkins County, NY, USA http://OakRoadSystems.com

[Stan Brown]

On Mon, 18 Jun 2012 11:37:28 -0400, Don Phillipson wrote:
> This example is defective according to current style books which
> recommend that such lists should be
> -- preceded or introduced by a semicolon and
> -- punctuated by commas.

Introduced by a semicolon? Surely not! A colon, or nothing.

Lists should be punctuated by commas unless one or more elements
contain commas. In that case the elements are separated by
semicolons.

I could be mistaken, but I don't think this is a difference between
Canadian and American punctuation.

[R H Draney]

Stan Brown filted:

>
>"a movie store, which had a new movie" is kind of silly. Unless it's
>a store that sells only used movies, *of*course* it will have not
>just *a* new movie but many. And if it sells only used movies, why
>not call it a used-movie store? (Is "movie store" usual where you
>live? Around here it would be a video store, if such things existed
>any more.)

Comedian Gallagher reported that his then-small daughter was always coming up
with cute names for familiar concepts, for instance calling a restaurant "the
dinner store"....r


--
Me? Sarcastic?
Yeah, right.

[Iain Archer]

Dr Nick wrote on Mon, 18 Jun 2012

>y0om4a <y0o...@gmail.com> writes:
>
>> Is this proper grammar: "I went to a grocery store, a movie store,
>> which had a new movie; and a clothing store, which is located near the
>> mall.
>
>I'm not certain it's stricly "grammar" as distinct from "style", but
>whichever, my preference is to use semicolons in lists when the items
>are long or contain commas. The key thing though is to be consistent
>which you haven't been. I'd say:
>
>"I went to a grocery store; a movie store, which had a new movie; and a
>clothing store, which is located near the mall."
>

I might use plain commas throughout in this colloquial example,
personally preferring the hint of an undifferentiated gush to possibly
over-formal enumeration.

But I don't have any objection to the original. The semi-colon seems to
me to make a singleton sublist of the last item. I then ask myself what
distinguishes it, decide that it possibly marks a brief moment in which
that individual item is recollected from memory, and wonder too if its
location perhaps differs from that of the other two.
--
Iain Archer

[fabzorba]

Reminds me of being at uni in the red hot late sixties. So many
parties, so many demos, so much to do, we were hardly ever in the
library. For this reason, I started calling it "the book place", and
the nickname stuck.

myles [older now, creaky joints in library more often, but am not a
fuddy duddy, never will be...] paulsen

[fabzorba]

On Jun 20, 5:45 pm, Iain Archer <m...@privacy.net> wrote:
> >I'm not certain it's stricly "grammar" as distinct from "style", but
> >whichever, my preference is to use semicolons in lists when the items
> >are long or contain commas.  The key thing though is to be consistent
> >which you haven't been.  I'd say:
>
> >"I went to a grocery store; a movie store, which had a new movie; and a
> >clothing store, which is located near the  mall."
>
> I might use plain commas throughout in this colloquial example,
> personally preferring the hint of an undifferentiated gush to  possibly
> over-formal enumeration.
>

Don't care what you say. Sticking fingers in ear: "Wahhahha whahhh,
CAN'T HEAR YOU!! CAN'T HEAR YOU!!"

Ok, POLL RANK time. Used to be editor of government periodicals. Would
lick lips and put BIG RED PEN through any such use of semi colons as
shown above. Totally unacceptable. Sticks out like dog's balls, except
dog's balls have some use, and look better. Go on, trawl thru google's
storehouse of "everything of any significance every written anywhere
since Year Dot" and you won't find such a teratoma there, no sir,
except for the purpose of demonstrating how ENGLISH IS NOT WRITTEN.

English teacher in my second year at High School (what is now Year 8)
asked his new class "Did your English teacher last year give you a
really good lesson on semi colons?"

At which we all ejaculated as one with many cheers: "Oh did he EVER,
sir!! Fair dink he did!! Oh, too right!! It was the grooviest, neatest
lesson we ever done got, Sir!! Most excellent, it were!! He explained
it 9 ways, and we just about bust a gut we was so happy wif the lesson
he gave! It all made sense. We picked him and carried him round the
quad five times, huzzain', and hoorayin', and bellowin 'for he's a
jolly good fellow', and a-chantin' the school war cry Boom a lacka
BOOM a lacka!! Boom a whacka BOOM a whacka...and so on, and we never
forgot it over the Christmas hols, no way Sir! We done forgot 'bout
perfect tension, 'n' we forgot about spittin' infinities, and 'bout
parsleying verbs, and 'bout nun phrases. And 'bout beginning sentences
wiff conjunctivitises. And 'bout ending summink wif propositions, and
'bout, well...well...we forgot 'bout all of it, Sir, all of it, 'cept
that you beaut lubberly wunnerful lesson on semi colons, which we now
use all the time. All the time, Sir!!!"

And we danced up and down the aisles and leapt from the desks, and
threw our chairs into the air, and took off our pants.

Sir called for some quiet, and then: "Well, I want you to forget all
about semi colons. They are pretentious, and about as useful as an
ashtray on a motorbike. I don't want to see any, and you will have
three marks deducted each time you use one. And the WHOLE class will
be kept in ten minutes every time anyone does it, and if it happens
again, I will send you down to [Deputy Headmaster] Basher Gordon, and
you will have your arse whipped into a bloody mass of pulped quivering
flesh so profoundly they will have to call an ambulance...." and so
on.

And I for one paid heed, and did NOT have to visit Basher Gordon, and
do not use semi colons save for the rarest of occasions. I know when
to use one same as I know when to use a cedilla, which, in English,
makes the ligature look commonplace.

And I advise same for you lot. And I don't mean just NOW when I'm
looking at you and talking to you. I mean now, and tomorrow and the
day after that, and every day for the rest of your misbeggoten lives.

myles [but will start another thread on movie titles with commas; just
to make the point...] paulsen

[R H Draney]

fabzorba filted:

>
>On Jun 20, 2:19=A0pm, R H Draney <dadoc...@spamcop.net> wrote:
>> Stan Brown filted:
>>
>>
>>

>> >"a movie store, which had a new movie" is kind of silly. =A0Unless it's

>> >a store that sells only used movies, *of*course* it will have not

>> >just *a* new movie but many. =A0And if it sells only used movies, why
>> >not call it a used-movie store? =A0(Is "movie store" usual where you
>> >live? =A0Around here it would be a video store, if such things existed
>> >any more.)
>>
>> Comedian Gallagher reported that his then-small daughter was always comin=
>g up
>> with cute names for familiar concepts, for instance calling a restaurant =

>"the
>> dinner store"....r
>>
>Reminds me of being at uni in the red hot late sixties. So many
>parties, so many demos, so much to do, we were hardly ever in the
>library. For this reason, I started calling it "the book place", and
>the nickname stuck.

Spanish seems to delight in this sort of directness: "llantaria"="tire store",
"carniceria"(butcher)="meat store", "lavanderia"(laundry)="wash store"....r

[Evan Kirshenbaum]

R H Draney <dado...@spamcop.net> writes:

> Spanish seems to delight in this sort of directness:
> "llantaria"="tire store", "carniceria"(butcher)="meat store",
> "lavanderia"(laundry)="wash store"....r

Not so direct, ¿sí? I thought the words came from the professions. A
carnecería is a place where the carnecero sells the carne. A
lavandería is a place where a lavandero lavas the clothes. A librería
is a place where the librero plays volleyball...er, sells the libros.

The DRAE doesn't know "llantaría". (I would have expected
"llantería", but apparently that means something like "wailing", from
"llantear".) They have "llantera", both in the sense of crying and,
as a tire factory (in Ecuador) and a place that repairs flats (in
Honduras).

--
Evan Kirshenbaum +------------------------------------
Still with HP Labs |If a bus station is where a bus
SF Bay Area (1982-) |stops, and a train station is where
Chicago (1964-1982) |a train stops, what does that say
|about a workstation?
evan.kir...@gmail.com

http://www.kirshenbaum.net/

[R H Draney]

Evan Kirshenbaum filted:

>
>R H Draney <dado...@spamcop.net> writes:
>
>> Spanish seems to delight in this sort of directness:
>> "llantaria"="tire store", "carniceria"(butcher)="meat store",
>> "lavanderia"(laundry)="wash store"....r
>
>Not so direct, ¿sí? I thought the words came from the professions. A
>carnecería is a place where the carnecero sells the carne. A
>lavandería is a place where a lavandero lavas the clothes. A librería
>is a place where the librero plays volleyball...er, sells the libros.
>
>The DRAE doesn't know "llantaría". (I would have expected
>"llantería", but apparently that means something like "wailing", from
>"llantear".) They have "llantera", both in the sense of crying and,
>as a tire factory (in Ecuador) and a place that repairs flats (in
>Honduras).

You're right, it's "llantera"...I was hindered by Google Translate's insistence
that tires are only called "neumaticos"....

At all the lavanderias around here, *I'm* the one who washes the damn
clothes....r

[Mike L]

On 21 Jun 2012 13:31:55 -0700, R H Draney <dado...@spamcop.net>
wrote:

A fishery is where you fish. A heronry is where herons roost. An
ironmongery is where you buy hardware. A nunnery is where they put
nuns. But an "etc" would break down when we got to falconry, chivalry,
camelry, etc.

--
Mike.

[R H Draney]

Mike L filted:

>
>A fishery is where you fish. A heronry is where herons roost. An
>ironmongery is where you buy hardware. A nunnery is where they put
>nuns. But an "etc" would break down when we got to falconry, chivalry,
>camelry, etc.

The United States Army had a camelry project for a short time in the 1850s, but
they still called them "cavalry"...I guess to a military mind all things with
four legs are the same....r

[Odysseus]

In article <js388...@drn.newsguy.com>,

R H Draney <dado...@spamcop.net> wrote:

<snip>

> The United States Army had a camelry project for a short time in the
> 1850s, but they still called them "cavalry"...I guess to a military
> mind all things with four legs are the same....r

Anything at all you can ride on land, legged or not: modern armies still
have units designated "cavalry", whose means of transport comprises
mostly tanks. For at least half a century the "dragoons" have ridden
armoured personnel carriers, the "light horse" (reconnaissance) jeeps &
armoured cars, and the "horse artillery" self-propelled guns.

--
Odysseus