“In a bulleted list, what are the rules about punctuation at the end of each line?” I asked a room of English teachers yesterday. Answering off the top of their heads, they began responding with competing rules, several beginning with, “Isn’t it…”
Some started searching online for an answer. In a few seconds, we had a new collection of “According tos” thrown into the mix. What’s more, when asking the question, I’d had an answer in my head and was throwing out the query to get support for my thinking. None came. Each proffered answer was different from what had been in my head when I asked.
Recognizing we were now awash in myriad answers, people started asking me to refine my question and help them understand the specific problem I was trying to solve. Their initial answers, they realized, were specific to the context they’d envisioned when I’d asked, not to the context that had sparked my need for understanding. They’d given their answers, not mine. Even though their first replies were too me, it took time to make their thinking actually about me.
If you’d asked me ahead of time what I was expecting, I’d have said I’d ask the question, others would answer with facts fitting the question, and I’d move on. I was, to my thinking, asking a simple question of experts in the content area about which I was curious.
No question is simple. Most of our initial answers are more about us than the question. Discerning the relevant and pertinent facts takes time and expertise. Everyone will have an opinion. The asking of the question is only the beginning of our work.
In the end, I went with semicolons.