Everything is a Gift: Pay Attention, Find Blessings, Celebrate Semicolons, Be Grateful
it’s passing
It’s Thanksgiving week in the US and we have much to be grateful for: “Pay attention. Find the blessing. It’s passing. Everything is a gift, and nothing lasts,” writes Erin Geesaman Rabke. While today is not Semicolon Day, held annually on April 16, it is the birthday of someone who changed my life, someone who did not make it to Semicolon Day April 16, 2022, someone I am grateful for, someone who took his life April 12, 2022 when he still had a lot to be grateful for.
So let’s talk about semicolons today. Semicolons have a period on top of a comma; this indicates that the writer might have stopped a sentence with a period, but they want to show the link to what follows so they put a comma underneath the period to indicate a strong connection. To restate this (paraphrasing the image below), a semi-colon means a sentence the writer could have ended, but chose not to; instead the writer chose to continue on writing.
Semi-Colon Day
A writer, an environmental and social justice activist, a poet, an artist, a human with a huge heart full of exuberance and enthusiasm for all life, my friend who committed suicide gave me a way to give myself permission to be who I am today, a writer, a poet, an artist, and for that I am very grateful.
While how he died and why matters, what’s important here is that he decided he no longer wanted to pay attention, to find the blessing, to remember that everything is temporary, that life is a gift, and nothing lasts.
Today, on what would have been his 70th birthday, his horoscope — which randomly showed up on my yahoo home page even though my birthday is in January– reads: “You’ve got far more going on today than anyone close realizes, and your odder talents can help you save the day! It’s a good time to step up and show the world what you can do.” Whether you are or are not a Scorpio, might this apply to you?
Technically, semicolons link in one sentence two related independent clauses (or complete ideas or complete sentences), and for writers, this is a powerful choice. For humans, to continue to link up, to continue on, to show that the story isn’t over, is also a powerful choice.
project semicolon logo
Lamott writes…
Learn more about the Semicolon Project and find tools for prevention.
My students often choose to link two complete ideas with a comma, but this is grammatically incorrect. A comma between two complete sentences or ideas is called a comma splice –like in film when two pieces of film are spliced together to make it flow as one. A comma splice makes it a simple fix–just add the period on top to turn it into a semi-colon to help people understand both the meaning, the musicality, and the connections between the parts of the sentence. Semicolons help writers organize complex ideas by showing the links making it easier for readers to follow the writer’s ideas and helping the paper flow better.
Learn more about how to use semicolons.
To lighten the mood and get to writing, here are a few more tips and here’s more humor:
grammar
What are you grateful for this Thanksgiving Week?
You know something I am grateful for?
Spelling, Punctuation, and Grammar!
Writing helps us make sense of the world.
Correct spelling, punctuation, and grammar help us to make sense of writing!
About the art at the top: Leslie Rinchen-Wongmo is a textile artist, teacher, author of Threads of Awakening: An American Woman’s Journey into Tibet’s Sacred Textile Art, and one of few non-Tibetan artists of silk appliqué thangka.
art predator 