I find this somewhat backwards. Semicolons, colons, and em dashes were invented (at least, it seems to me) to make sentences flow better. Trying to write flowing sentences without using the full toolkit of available punctuation seems to me like a bad idea; it's unnecessarily restrictive, like trying to cook without salt and pepper. Why not just use the available punctuation, instead of arbitrarily consigning some of it to the trash bin?
I am confident in the ability of the reader to read and understand sentences that use colons and semicolons, where those punctuation marks best serve what the author is trying to say.
This is the 21st century. Is being a transvestite hermaphrodite a bad thing? I seem to remember another thread hereabouts in which a famous writer commented that famous writers are usually not entirely clear why their writing is successful, but they keep getting asked so some will make any old rubbish up. From what I know of Kurt Vonnegut he was likely to do that even without being asked, just for the fun of it. The only arguments I see there are a) that blogger doesn't like them and b) they affect the pace of the writing, slowing it down. Well, I like writing to have dynamics of pace, and I think it's excellent to have tools that help with that. Fortunately, if I ever get published in the USA it will be a US version of something published in the UK, and if I have enough success for that to happen then I expect the publisher will look after dumbing it down for the US market (hey, don't blame me, it was Mamma who blamed failings of the US high school system for the American dislike of "advanced" punctuation )
Listen, I've never been an optimist about the intelligence of the masses, but if you think the American public is so undereducated that it won't understand a semi-colon, you should just give up now. Also the article uses an example of writing that would be horrible regardless of punctuation (also, dialogue, in which case the semi-colon really is almost never appropriate); that's rather disingenuous of the writer.
I'd dispute that. Last time this came up I picked up the Ian Rankin book I was reading, opened it to the page I was up to, and there was an entirely appropriate semicolon in dialogue. Saying that people shouldn't use semicolons shouldn't be used in dialogue seems to me to be on a par with saying that painters should paint with their good hand tied behind their back. A good writer will use all the tools available.
I don't think it's entirely inappropriate, but I think that the em-dash is better at conveying the rhythm of spoken language better than the semi-colon (though I suppose if a character were speaking in a particular turgid way, it would work well).
