: Re: The Good, the Bad, and the Semicolon I completed my novel and an editor friend graciously offered to assist me with formatting. As a former scientist, I am more familiar with technical or academic

@Cody1607638

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You mentioned using semicolons in dialog. As others have pointed out, this is usually unnatural. But it is instructive to understand why it feels unnatural.

In real life, people rarely speak in fully grammatical complete sentences. Real speech has filled pauses, abrupt changes of subject, sentence fragments, excess or insufficient connective tissue, and numerous other irregularities. If we actually wrote all of these things verbatim, our characters would read like idiots and our readers would put the book down after half a chapter. The written word lacks the intonation, body language, and other nonverbal communicative channels which make ordinary speech comprehensible.

So we summarize and condense. We rewrite the incomplete thoughts that a person would actually say into the complete sentences that our readers can comprehend. There is an art to this. Do it too lightly and you have all of the problems I described above. Do it too heavily and your characters read like a textbook, with no voice of their own. Different authors, and perhaps different characters, will strike different balances along this spectrum.

Enter the semicolon. A semicolon denotes a short pause, less than a period; it connotes a thematic or structural link between two complete sentences. When you find yourself inserting these "nicely linked up" sentences into a character's speech, you may have gone too far with summarizing and condensing. Your dialog no longer reads like something the character could have come up with on the spur of the moment. Instead, it reads like something they rehearsed in advance.

Of course, there are times when a semicolon in dialog is entirely fair. For example, a politician's planned speech may well contain a semicolon or two. Such speeches really are rehearsed in advance, so the semicolon enhances the verisimilitude of the character's speech pattern. But when that same politician gets off the stage, you should expect them to revert to more natural punctuation.

In conclusion, banishing individual parts of the language from our usage is unhelpful. Nevertheless, it is important to understand the implications of our choices while writing. Careful use of punctuation, diction, and tone of voice are just as important as, if not more important than, narrative considerations like plot and setting.

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