A MONK IS BEING INITIATED BY AN ABBOTT.

ABBOTT

Welcome Brother Gerard to out humble order. A life time, of quiet contemplation, of doing the Lord's wishes.

MONK

Thank you Abbott. I know little of this order; is it a silent meditative order? Or do you grow fruit to praise the Lord?

ABBOTT

We are a slightly unusual order, here brother you'll need these.

HANDS THE MONK A BOX OF TISSUES; A JAR OF KY, AND A MANILA ENVELOPE

MONK LOOKS INSIDE THE ENVELOPE, THERE ARE PHOTOS.

MONK

Why is there a photo of a leather carpet with a wig in here?

ABBOTT

Look closer my brother.

MONK

Oh my God it's a really ugly naked woman. What kind of holy order is this?

ABBOTT

We're a wanking order. We abuse our selves over those poor souls to ugly to ever inspire lust in another. With us they know some where in the world. Some devout soul is knocking one out in their name, and our Lord.

MONK

Oh my word there's Anne Widecombe in here, and Johnny Vegas. Who is the patron saint of this depraved order?

ABBOTT

Oh my foolish boy isn't obvious it's George Bush. The biggest wanker of them all .

Substitute for who ever you like in the final line, Gordon Brown, Sarkozy, me possibly?
 

The concept's quite a good one, but it doesn't seem to be funny enough the way you've done it. Again, you probably don't need the first two lines. Just start at: "Welcome to our order, Brother Gerard. You'll need these." and get to the point quicker. Similarly, lose the leather carpet/wig line and go straight to the ugly woman line.

I think the sketch is much shorter than you want it to be here.

Dan
 

Fair point I jusr dashed it off after winding up a friend on the subject, so it probably does need surgery.
 

you have to read your stuff through before posting. i don't care about grammar in "normal" threads but when you are trying to read a sketch and visualise it mistakes wreck it.
 

I've worked on a grammar, is it more readable now?
 

Sooty, that is much improved from a readability point of view. I am impressed by the ambitious inclusion of a semicolon.

Now having read and enjoyed (and indeed watched) a good many of your sketches, allow me to give you some advice, as a world-weary ex-proofreader and copy editor.

The main area your written presentation could benefit from is the correct use of full stops and commas. These substantially affect how people read (or perform) your dialogue.

For example you have written:

With us they know some where in the world. Some devout soul is knocking one out in their name, and our Lord.

The full stop in the middle is disastrous. Not only is the first part "With us they know some where in the world" no longer a logical sentence, which makes it confusing to the eye (and ungrammatical, although that is not the point here), but the full stop implies a PAUSE between "world" and "some" which I am sure you do not intend to be there, and throws the rhythm of the speech into chaos, with unnatural stresses placed on the start and end words of each sentence on first read.

You also tend to insert commas (which have a shorter pause associated with them) liberally into all your sentences.

A life time, of quiet contemplation, of doing the Lord's wishes.

Although you could read that line with the first comma intact, I suspect you don't intend it to be there, i.e. "A lifetime of quiet contemplation" spoken as an unbroken phrase, with no pause inserted after "lifetime". This is a minor example, but many of your sentences in other sketches are often difficult to read due to infestations of random commas.

Snooty grammarians (are there any other kind ?) refer to this error as the "yob's comma", which I will leave you to Google. (It was a yob's comma that famously embarrassed the Blair Government, by proving that they had nicked their "dodgy dossier" from a PhD student without even correcting the grammar before claiming it as their own.)

Also (a minor point) you would benefit from not splitting up compound words quite so much: it's "lifetime" not "life time", "somewhere" not "some where" etc.
 

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Har fleag har fleag har fleag onward

 

Bad grammar can make a piece of work difficult to read. It can, for example, blunt the comedic effect of a sentence; a comedy writer does not want this!

It is, however, a minefield of a topic. There are so many contradictions and shadowy rules that it's very difficult to follow.

Is my use of the semicolon correct?
 

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I endorse this post

Feel free to be as negative as you want to my scripts.
Feel free to make whatever suggestions you want to my scripts.
 

Don't knock my grammar. She's a lovely woman.
 

Winterlight - I think colons and semicolons are less important in dialogue than in writing for print.

But to answer your question, the main use of a semicolon (excepting lists) is to connect two sentences that the author considers to be closely related, drawing the reader's attention to this connection.

Tony Blair forges dossiers; forging dossiers is corrupt.

is rather more pointed than

Tony Blair forges dossiers. Forging dossiers is corrupt.

As for:

It can, for example, blunt the comedic effect of a sentence; a comedy writer does not want this!

I would use a colon (or more likely a dash), as they are not really two separate concepts being joined. The second "sentence" couldn't stand alone without the first. But I don't think a semicolon is necessarily wrong. It certainly doesn't affect the readability of dialogue in the same way that commas and full stops do.
 

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Har fleag har fleag har fleag onward

 

Thanks Griff for a through bit of advice. I love the semicolon so much I may soon need a colostomy.

Am going on a grammar course with my work next week.