New York Times probably would fail its own punctuation test

I read this article in The New York Times, and I can't decide which is better: the actual story or the correction appended. Take a look:

NEW YORK REGION

Celebrating the Semicolon in a Most Unlikely Location

By SAM ROBERTS

Published: February 18, 2008

Semicolon sightings in the city are unusual but Neil Neches, a writer in the transit agency’s marketing and service information department, inserted one on a placard anyway.

In a story about the inclusion of a certain punctuation between independent clauses, The Times commits a serious flub and omits a certain punctuation from the title of a certain book about proper punctuation. By leaving out the comma in "Eats, Shoots & Leaves," The Times subverts and simultaneously proves the modern-day conundrum of poor English at the center of the book's title. (The presence or absence of a comma distinguishes a cuddly panda that walks into a cafe and eats shoots and leaves, from a crazed panda that walks into a cafe and eats, shoots and leaves.)

As for the article's subject matter, I'm a semicolon detractor - only because most people can't use it properly, especially newspaper reporters. I fully support its informed use, but there are too many times it's used incorrectly when a more neglected punctuation - the period - would suffice. The run-on sentence is my pet peeve.

Where the heck did this statement come from anyway?

"In literature and journalism, not to mention in advertising, the semicolon has been largely jettisoned as a pretentious anachronism."

Are you serious New York "Our Reporters Can Write Anything They Want Without Attribution" Times? I see proper and improper use of the "winking" piece of punctuation (as in the emoticon, left) each time I read the paper.

And though it's technically not wrong, I don't really agree with the semicolon's use in this particular example: "Please put it in a trash can; that's good news for everyone." The first sentence leads to the second, but they're not really related.

I also fault the grammar. The sentence conveys the action of moving something into something else; therefore, the preposition "into" instead of "in" should be used (semicolon is used correctly in previous sentence).

"Please put it into a trash can: That’s good news for everyone" is more like it.

I side with this guy:

"Allan M. Siegal, a longtime arbiter of New York Times style before retiring, opined, 'The semicolon is correct, though I’d have used a colon, which I think would be a bit more sophisticated in that sentence.'"

I'm sure the co-arbiter of Times style, Bill Connolly (whom I met and received an autographed stylebook from while I was at Temple University), also would concur.

Frankly, I don't even like the "trash can" marketing line. It's not cute. It's not motivating. And it's somewhat degrading to newspapermen. Instead of saying "throw good journalism into the trash," I say, "Help a journalist and educate others: Leave your newspaper for the next commuter to read."

And by saying "educate others," I'm taking for granted that the newspaper has been properly copy edited.