Colon Cancer

From a profile of James Wood, my favorite contemporary literary critic, about writing for The New Yorker:

His only other peeve is the way the magazine treats the semi-colon. "The New Yorker will try as often as possible to change it into a colon," he says - ascribing it to an attempt to mimic English properness. "I love semi-colons," he says with all the enthusiasm of a 10-year-old talking about chocolate.

I couldn't agree more.