I received a copy edit of an article earlier this evening, and one of the comments was “Please review semicolon use.” I went into a little huff about copy editors and how I’m starting to understand why writers complain about them constantly. Having been one myself, however, and knowing that I’m far from infallible (and that I’d struggled a lot with this piece) before I wrote my planned blog rant I went back and looked at the article. Good thing I did, because yeah…I’d used three semicolons in four short paragraphs. The copy editor had a valid point. I ended up thanking him/her.

(I will say, however, that if I use semicolons in every paragraph in my creative work, I’ll fight any copy editor who opposes it. In my creative work, the punctuation is an organic part of the whole. In the aforementioned article, I just got clunky in how I presented the information.)

I used to tell my students at Penn State that if they learned one thing in my class, it would be how to use semicolons–or at least how not to use them. Ten years of business writing apparently changed my priorities, because one of my Armstrong students said, “The two things I’ll remember from this class are CONCISE and CLEAR.”

Speaking of professors and writing, awhile back I dropped a class because I didn’t think the prof was playing fair with her grading. One of her comments to me was “Make sure you use the spelling and grammar check on you’re computer.” I kid you not. Now, I always used spelling and grammar check, she knew I was an editor, all of her comments contained multiple spelling and grammar problems, and she’d never flagged any errors in my writing. In the context of her other responses to my assignments, I felt like she was nitpicking.

After I dropped the class, I thought about sending her a message to the effect of “Next time you comment on a student’s grammar, you should run yours through grammar-check first; you just killed your own credibility.” I tried to word the communique in a tactful, respectful way, even mentioning that I was writing as a professional courtesy, but there was no way to make it not sound snarky. So I dropped it. I’ve learned that when people are determined to be stupid, it’s usually easier just to let them.

And once in awhile, I can even be gracious to someone who helps me sound like less of an idiot myself! Thanks, anonymous copy editor.