Friday, July 18, 2008

A question mark day

This picture is not related to my post today; I just thought you might like it. The related picture is below: my new radio. One of my big beefs is instruction manuals (i.e., for computer things, Photoshop, cameras, etc) which tell you: open VQR and attach LMN, tab down to OPI and type in the proper code. They never tell you, however what VQR, LMN, and OPI are, or what the code is though, so you can’t possibly do it. The instruction manual for the radio was quite different. The basic safety instructions had 18 steps which began: 1. Read the instructions; 2. Keep these instructions; 3. Heed all warnings; 4. Follow all instructions. At that point, I read no further.
As you can see, I am trying out colons and semi-colons. Rachael came home from school yesterday and I asked her what was happening in her classes. “We talked about colons,” she said. Being a nurse, I was rather astonished, and asked in what possible context could they be talking about colons. “Not those colons, “ she said, “It’s the ones that link sentence parts together and start lists!” I felt rather foolish. I think I have rather overdone it with the colons and semi-colons. I am way more fond of dashes and parentheses, and I usually overdo them – so I thought I would overdo something else for a change.

3 comments:

bex said...

I'm always afraid to use semicolons; I can never remember the rules for when to use them and when to use colons, so end up using dashes and parentheses instead.

joannamauselina said...

That's it in a nutshell!

L said...

Hahaha, that colon joke was really funny! I know this comment isn't very insightful, but I haven't commented in awhile so I just thought I would.