Subway Ad Semi-Colon Rocks News Media

Funny article in the New York Times yesterday and today (updated with an entertaining correction). My favorite parts (separated in the original by a couple of paragraphs):

Americans, in particular, prefer shorter sentences without, as style books advise, that distinct division between statements that are closely related but require a separation more prolonged than a conjunction and more emphatic than a comma.
...
One of the school system’s most notorious graduates, David Berkowitz, the Son of Sam serial killer who taunted police and the press with rambling handwritten notes, was, as the columnist Jimmy Breslin wrote, the only murderer he ever encountered who could wield a semicolon just as well as a revolver. (Mr. Berkowitz, by the way, is now serving an even longer sentence.)

An even longer sentence. Heh. The Times writer had fun writing that, I bet.