This one's dedicated to Dana and Liz and all the other editors of the world. Hat tip to Fat Asian Baby for coming across this Gawker post that's full of hilarity for all us grammar geeks:

And Now He's Dead: Semicolon; Punctuation Mark

The Semicolon died this week at the age of 417 from complications of irrelevancy and misuse. Semicolon was born in England in 1591 to Ben Jonson, the first notable writer to use them "systematically." The mark of punctuation dedicated its career to connecting independent clauses and indicating a closer relationship between the clauses than a period does. But mostly it just confused the shit out of English students everywhere.

Read on here. 

I have an inkling that the perpetually misunderstood ellipses will be next to go.