Freddy waved a hand; suddenly, a blackboard appeared. He took one long claw and dragged it slowly across the board. The terrible scrrreeeech that it emitted made tears spring to Jamie's eyes. Freddy closed his eyes and breathed deeply, as if the sound turned him on or brought back fond memories. And it was. But, just as suddenly, the man's eyes snapped open and he dug more deeply into the board, carving words into the surface and speaking as he did so.
Freddy stared deeply into the boy's witless eyes, hard, knives screeching on the board. "A semi-colon," he begins, his whiskey-and-gravel voice sending a hot shiver of fear down Jamie's spine, "separates two independent clauses. Let me show you. I want to kill you; you want to get out of here alive. See?
Each independent clause, or complete sentence, is divided by a semi-colon, not--" he pauses here, eyes darkening, "Not with a comma. If you use a comma, that's a comma splice. It's like me dyin' in all my fuckin'' movies; it breaks all natural laws. And we don't want to break any laws of nature, do we?"
Freddy paused, taking a moment to flex his clawed fingers as Jamie gulped and nodded frantically. "Let's try one more. 'Freddy rammed his knives through the boy's chest; he could only gurgle before he died.' See? Use a semi-colon, not a comma there. If you do it right, I'll consider not making that statement a fact." Freddy smiled winningly, then tapped his knives on the board again. "Now, let's move on!"