The Usage of Semicolon is Confusing; Most People Are Afraid of It

• HaricotVert
  February 20th, 2008 at 11:58 am

  I see what you did there in the title; that was pretty clever.

• B
  February 20th, 2008 at 1:23 pm

  I didn’t read the article, but I imagine that there are three main reasons to this:

  1) People feel less comfortable with the semicolon and therefore use it less. This results in it leaving “Standard English” bit by bit, much like “whom.”

  2) People replace the semicolon and use the dash - like this - to express themselves, which is more visible and appears to have become the Swiss Army knife of punctuation marks.

  3) Writing for the web demands that we use more simple sentence constructions that will be more easily read. This in and of itself means that we see less and less of the semicolon, which leads to an exacerbation of point 1)…

• tona b.
  February 20th, 2008 at 2:59 pm

  I love to use semicolons! I use ‘em all the time!

• tona b.
  February 20th, 2008 at 3:01 pm

  Oooh! Darn html smilies!

• Em
  February 20th, 2008 at 4:26 pm

  In my last paper I used about 3 or 4 semicolons.

  I love those damn thing.

• jen
  February 20th, 2008 at 4:51 pm

  Yep. I use them all the time, too! I’m also a big fan of ellipses.

• jen
  February 20th, 2008 at 5:19 pm

  P.S.
  You will love this awesome animated grammar gif:
  http://i86.photobucket.com/albums/k83/JennyCrackCorn/greatest-animated -gif.gif
  I haven’t figured out the part about not using your PIN at an ATM and something about the HIV virus, though.

• gargamel
  February 20th, 2008 at 5:49 pm

  “The Usage of Semicolon is Confusing; Most (american) People Are Afraid of It”

• Johnny Cat
  February 20th, 2008 at 7:07 pm

  @Jen– PIN number, ATM machine and HIV virus are all redundant because N stands for number, etc.

  And I am a staunch user of the semicolon; it’s very useful when breaking up a sentence into two isolated thoughts. My problem is deciding whether to use a colon or a dash.

  I love colon.

• NiteWhite
  February 20th, 2008 at 9:12 pm

  I might use it. It really depends on the audience reading my stuff.

  In some situations I feel like I’m showing off if I use the semicolon, so I like to throw in a few split infinitives or dangling participles to balance it out.

• auto_matic_star
  February 21st, 2008 at 12:55 pm

  I’ll just re-iterate the obvious; It took one Simon and Shuster’s grammar volumes to help solve this mystery. Don’t use a semi-colon like a comma dammit! You don’t say, “John and Sue are on vacation. They brought their swimsuits; beachball; and their beach towels.” It’s not proper grammer. The correct way would be to say, “John and Sue are on vacation; they brought their swimsuits, beachball and their beach towels.” They’re supposed to be placed at the end of complete sentences; especially if you have more to say about the particular subject. Cool huh? Now run and tell all of your friends about it.

• Jacques
  February 21st, 2008 at 4:34 pm

  Once you learn how to use them you will never look back; however, if you ever had a bastard grade your technical paper where you consistently misused semi-colons you may find yourself gun-shy in later years.

  They can be used as super-commas when you want to be unambiguous about commas contained within the items being listed. This is the list; this, that and the other thing; he, she and the dog; homer, marge and the kids.

• MadMolecule
  February 21st, 2008 at 11:11 pm

  @auto_matic_star:

  It’s “grammar,” not “grammer.” Gaudere’s Law strikes!

  (If you meant that using a semicolon in place of a comma is not appropriate to the guy who played Frasier Crane, then I retract this comment. Except to point out that Mr. Grammer’s name is usually capitalized.)

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