Thread by @BCDreyer

I had somehow never noticed before that Shirley Jackson uses semicolons in dialogue; she gets away with it.

[I still don't recommend their use in dialogue.]

When I was (carefully) copyediting the volume of SJ's work we published as Let Me Tell You, I recall encountering two extremely lengthy multiclause sentences held together by a single semicolon, and to be honest my response was:

Madam, this is why we have periods.

Also, as long as we’re here, she reveals in her essay “Garlic in Fiction” that Eleanor lives in New York City, which puts Hill House presumably in Massachusetts (though I suppose it could be in Pennsylvania).