Month: October 2025

I was wrong, and I am sorry.

Arrogance blinded me to the simple truth, but I understand now. I do. I have seen the error of my ways, and I apologize for my transgression. Never again will I be so pretentious as to defend the absolute uselessness of the semi-colon.

In the interest of full confession, I will tell you how I came to this conclusion. I wrote a book. It had 95000 words in it. There were also 612 semi-colons. So, I challenged myself to see how many I could remove for the reprint without losing whatever effect I was hoping to preserve. Anyone care to guess how many I got rid of? Billy? Sally?

The correct answer is 612 (or all of them). I replaced them all with one of five devices. It was that easy. Can’t say that about a period … or even an ellipsis.

So, again, to all the people I offended with my post begging the salvation of a useless piece of punctuation, I apologize. I was wrong.  Let it die in peace; the useless semi-colon.

RIP.

Would you believe me if I told you that vegetables do not exist?

Think about it. Everything that you know as a vegetable is actually something else. Lettuce is a leaf. A carrot is a root. Brussels sprouts are, well, sprouts. And cauliflower … you get the picture.

Now, why would someone create an entire category of food? Could it be to sell you more food? The restaurant industry has been forced down some sneaky avenues in the past, and one of them led to a term for “the things on the plate that aren’t meat.” Hence, vegetables were born out of pure culinary imagination to fill a void no one noticed anyway. 

Another reason not to trust a chef.