Late this morning during fourth period English 10, a peer-reviewer confirmed that a student had gone mad, drunk on the power of the semicolon. Seemingly trying to imitate the rambling style of great authors like Dickens, one Bentley Bannon connected no less than five independent clauses in a fifty-seven word sentence, inadvertently making it seem like he had forgotten how to use periods. We made the mistake of interviewing Bannon over text, a proposal which he seemed to take as a chance to demonstrate his total inability to write a normal sentence.
“I don’t think it’s at all odd for me to write such long sentences; yes, sentences as long and winding as a path through the woods in May, a path long-abandoned by those who once walked it; its cobble-encrusted trail grown over with weeds and those branches which hung over it adorned with fiery orange leaves, along whose winding way once walked the Autumn King but now stalks the Winter Lord; and just as the path runs into some leafy grotto so too do my sentences effortlessly segue from one to the next, with nary a period; no, that round, squatting demon, the period, who I so disdain, and shall never use nor abuse, and I would rather use ten** semicolons (and indeed, I shall do so effectively) than let one disgrace my page, for my English paper is the most holy of written words, and all who disrespect it shall fall— ”
At this point, it became immediately clear why Bannon’s peer-review partner, Amy Scrungausch, had some sort of long-sentence related trauma, stating “Oh my God. I can’t take it. No more long sentences or commas. No more semicolons. SHUT THE HELL UP ABOUT DUMBASS METAPHORS!” At this point, she began staring into the middle distance with a horrified look on her face, muttering “no more semicolons. No more semicolons. No more semicolons,” while a single tear ran down her face.
As of press time, Bannon’s word limit is being adjusted to curb his sentences to a readable length, and Scrungausch is entering therapy to overcome her new fear of linked but indepent clauses.
