I have never liked the semicolon. I’ve always thought it a bit wimpy, used when a full stop would be so much better. Or perhaps it has always seemed a touch too scholarly. (I recently edited a piece of popular fiction where the writer used the semicolon liberally. Whenever one appeared in her text, I dived like a falcon, plucked it out, and substituted a period.)
Semicolons were given short shrift in high school English, probably because I was educated in the U.S. rather than Canada or Britain, where semicolons have long been loved and respected.
If you’d like to know more about the semicolon’s role, check out this wonderful post by Mary Norris of the New Yorker, who makes us intimate with several facts about semicolons and writing in general:
- We learn to punctuate by reading. (The better the writing the better our learning. I’m guessing, though, that the late Sidney Sheldon, who wrote pretty disposable stuff, was probably an ace punctuator.)
- Semicolons are not inflated commas. Instead they are a “subtle hybrid” of a comma and a colon.
What I really love about Ms. Norris’ post is that it gives good reasons for loving and using the semicolon. Perhaps the best piece of information in it is that the semicolon can keep a sentence afloat, as the reader anticipates what follows. I intend to begin using semicolons immediately; I will not wait for long.
What do you think? Do you use semicolons in your writing? What do you like about them?
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