This is not the dash that Usain Bolt does in under 10 seconds, slowing down at the end so he can point at a rare bird in the sky. This is dash the punctuation writers use as a kind of strengthening afterthought - a slightly heftier kick than a comma. Or maybe even a semi-colon. I don't use semi-colons. Sub-editors have stuck them in quite often without asking, but that's because they can. I can only swear like a pooper when I read the result. Beyond holding a list together like two-dollar-shop glue, semi-colons appear to have no real use, they just slow the eye.
Colons are so much better.
But I have no colon. A lovely surgeon who worked in Africa on a medical ship during his holidays every year took my colon out in December 2010. He told me how long it was and I knew how long I was, so there was head scratch there. But he was a very nice man so I didn't want to call him a liar. Later, Google told me how long a colon could be - even a semi-colon can be a metre long.
Do we even need a colon?
I still eat the same food and can drink like a fish if the mood so takes me. I can also dance like a crazed jungle-clearing orang-utan. I don't, never have done, but I CAN.
Colons are over-rated. I have no gall bladder either - haven't missed it for a second. I certainly didn't enjoy my gall bladder when it was there, one bite of streaky bacon from the Farmer's Market and I was screaming on the ground like a ferret with a fork in its eye. So a man steeped in the wonderful game of cricket - hence I could trust him, Mr Heslop - took it out. And I have seamlessly quaffed streaky bacon ever since.
A right eye?
Nobody needs a right eye. I haven't had a right eye since 1979. It died by its own hand - diabetic mismanagement saw to that. A left eye is enough. There are so many jokes about being one-eyed that can be made at prestigious dinner parties when the phrase you-are-so-biased flies through the air on wings of wine. I always gets a cheap laugh.
But what about the kidney?
I think that line is from Monty Python - or is it what about the workers?
Beyond The Fringe?
It's so hard remembering stuff these days as cerebral twilight swirls ominously around the brain. Even an afternoon nap now seems so natural. The workers indeed. I'll tell you this, if I may be allowed to digress, that Helen Kelly will be the next Labour Prime Minister. I know she's yonks away right now, not even in Parliament, and a host of wannabees are lining up to win the election after the next one, but Helen Kelly, she's the business. I'll put my house on it. I am so over male Labour leaders.
So, I was sitting in a Bath Street cafe last Wednesday, conversation had slowed, so I thought I would cause an intellectual stir by asking suggestions for this week's column topic. I'm sure everyone thinks I have a big pile already done in a roll-top desk drawer. Nobody spoke for an hour or so. So then I said the next word I heard would be the column. The next word spoken was SO. So, I said, I will write the column about the word so. Many of you will have thought this column was about the future of the New Zealand Labour Party. Wrong. It is about how multitaskable the word so can be.
So I used it 24 times for grammatical verification. I also threw in 12 dashes - for Anna.
Life can be SO unexpected.
• Roy Colbert is a Dunedin writer.
