The Battle Against Twilight

This makes me happy. I'd say I'm more of a Star Trek fan than a Star Wars fan, but I'm not crazy enough about either to engage in a dispute between the two. I am, however, very enthusiastic in my dislike for Twilight.



In case you didn't know, George Takei was in both Star Trek and Star Wars.

Reasoning with Vampires

The blog Reasoning with Vampires has had a lot of time on my facebook newsfeed lately. My friends Mariya and Megan are both hooked. As far as my friends go, these two have values at pretty opposite extremes from one another. What they have in common is an interest in scifi and fantasy--this is, of course, part of why they are my friends.

Reasoning with Vampires is a blog devised by a Twilight despiser. Having had a conversation with my boss about why I am against Twilight, I thought I would check it out to see what I could share with her about how Twilight teaches girls that there is nothing more important than having a boyfriend.

This post below is not one I would share with my boss, but it is one that connected with my interests.

Don't get me wrong, I appreciate that Stephanie Meyer can identify an independent clause and knows that a semi-colon can go between two of them. Most people don't know that. I do take issue with her over-use of this punctuation mark in connecting unrelated sentences.

I once heard the director of the Writing Center at Kansas State tell a student that a semi-colon is a last resort punctuation mark. If you're inclined to use it, find the relationship between the sentences involved and try to use a conjunction to show that relationship--a subordinating or coordinating conjunction will do the trick.

I'm not quite that strict with my semi-colon policies because I like the semi-colon; I don't want to see it fall out of use. Sometimes the rhythm requires the semi-colon rather than some sort of conjunction. But I only use semi-colons in places where I would be tempted to use a run-on, meaning only in places where the two independent clauses form a single effect to me. That's the only time a semi-colon should be used to fuse two independent clauses together into a single sentence.

Semi-colons create sentence marriage, which should only be entered upon in cases of serious mutual idea committment.

Shame on you, Stephanie Meyer, for encouraging unhealthy relationships between girls and vampires and between clauses. It's just not right.