There is an elegant node somewhere and it eludes my search efforts right now. However since reading it, it always pops into mind when I am about to cast a vote. It was something to the effect of "++ where you would say Amen". That's it. I use -- for rare instances when needing to (contribute to) correct(ing) something. Not for casual use.

--
perl -pe "s/\b;([mnst])/'\1/mg"