: 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

@Murphy332

Vote Up Vote Down

I think most people just FEAR the semicolon!

Below is an excerpt from theoatmeal.com/comics/semicolon

How to use a semicolon
The most feared punctuation on earth.

skipping over WHY and HOW

WHEN - When should I use a semicolon?
"I gnaw on old car tires; it strengthens my jaw so I'll be better conditioned for bear combat."
Use a semicolon when you want to form a bond between two statements, typically when they are related to or contrast with one another. In the example above, the relationship between gnawing on tires and combatting bears is strengthened by using a semicolon. "I fought the bear and won. Also, I never kiss plague rats on the mouth." In this sentence, your victory against the bear does not need to be connected to the plague rat, so a period is used.

INTERNAL - Use a semicolon to connect sentences that contain internal punctuation. "When dinosaurs agree on something, they'll often high-five one another; dinosaurs are all about high fives." If you'd used a comma in the sentence, it would have resulted in a comma splice. If you'd used a period, you'd lose the connection between the two clauses.

SUPER - Use a semicolon as a super-comma. "While searching for a good place to get a unicorn burger, I travelled to Seattle, Washington, Tokyo, Japan; and London, England." Use a semicolon if you need to make a list of items that are separated with a comma. This often occurs when listing locations, names, dates, and descriptions.

Again, this brilliance is excerpted from The Oatmeal's Grammar Comics , but the basic concept is one I've agreed with. Semicolons are not fancy ; they're just another tool with a specific set of use cases, some of which are quite common.

(0)

Login to post a comment!