Editing User talk:Txtracer (section)

== Regarding use of Semicolons ==

Txtracer,

I noticed you have made some very recent changes to "Kyoukai Senjou no Horizon", and I appreciate that. As I've read the EPUB
version, I have noticed, (not sure when it was last updated), that there were certainly a few grammatical mistakes that stood out.

However, I was curious as to your use of semicolons in some of your edits. I realize that the semicolon is a potentially "useful" punctuation mark for separating independent clauses in a sentence. However, in quite a few of your edits that I've noticed, it's more being used as a run-on sentence "fixer".

This isn't an outright criticism, it's more of a question or "constructive criticism" if anything. I have often thought the semicolon to be a rather... questionably useful punctuation mark, so I'll admit to a bit of bias.

That having been said, I think some of these sentences would benefit more from being separated into individual parts, rather than being kept as one long series of thoughts conjoined by a semicolon.

I was interested in your reasoning and am curious to hear what you have to say on the matter. On that note, I encourage you to, (if that's okay by you), email me at PiousCorn [at] hotmail [dot][com] with your response, as I check my email frequently.

Thank you, and thank you for working on correcting some of the grammatical errors in "Kyoukai Senjou no Horizon", it has needed some love and I really appreciate what you do,

-PiousCorn

:Hi!  No love for the lowly semicolon?  You are quite right, I've used it often to break up long strings of comma-spliced clauses and run-ons.  The constant problem I face as an "editor" here is that I don't know Japanese and don't have access to the original novels, so I am kind of on my own in trying to divine what the author intended to say (and how he wanted to say it) prior to the translators getting ahold of it. My editorial philosophy (ho ho) is to make as little change to the original structure of the work as necessary while trying to make it read as clearly as possible.  Sometimes I can do that with a semicolon, other times the sentence is so long that I have to split it (and sometimes it's such a mess that I wind up having to rewrite it completely). Changing a comma to a semicolon is less of a change.

:As I have continued in my editing here (and remember, this is my first time doing this kind of thing!), I think I've grown a bit more forgiving (or lax) in eliminating the run-ons.  I've decided that as long as it doesn't "read" poorly, I should leave it alone. I constantly have to remind myself that this isn't my story and every change I make can alter Kawakami-san's intent. --[[User:Txtracer|Txtracer]] ([[User talk:Txtracer#top|talk]]) 22:32, 17 January 2015 (CST)