What's the grammatical rule for lists? I know commas are the norm for short, one word lists, but what about lists where there are more details? I have this, and decided to use full stops because it 'sounds' right in my head, but is it correct? ----------- It was the usual round-up of non-news; Dreamers had finally made it onto the legal drugs category. A court case throwing doubt over the use of MRE to secure convictions. Three killed in hit and run. Restaurant owner murdered. Massive haul of black market cigarettes seized. And the weather outlook was cloudy with spells of rain.
Commas are still appropriate for your example, with the caveat that you use a colon instead of a semicolon to denote that a list is coming. If you're doing a complex list, the grammatical rule is to use commas, unless one of your listed sentences contains a comma which does not denote the next listed item. In the case I just described, you'd switch the commas that signal change in list items to semicolons. Your example would be fine with commas. You can also leave it as a series of fragments if you so choose (as a style thing, but it is technically incorrect grammar), but that first semicolon you have needs to be a colon either way.
You could use commas for this example, which'd be my personal preference. You could also use semicolons, I think, though I usually see them used to separate list items that contain commas themselves. Pretty sure the semicolon you're using currently is incorrect, but someone clever about grammar will have to weigh in on that.
The semicolon should be a colon. And I would tweak the items to make them sentences: It was the usual round-up of non-news: Dreamers had finally made it onto the legal drugs category. A court case threw doubt over the use of MRE to secure convictions. Three were killed in a hit and run. A restaurant owner was murdered. A massive haul of black market cigarettes was seized. And the weather outlook was cloudy with spells of rain. Or, you could use commas, and make them all not-sentences: It was the usual round-up of non-news: Dreamers added to the legal drugs category, a court case throwing doubt over the use of MRE to secure convictions, three killed in a hit and run, a restaurant owner murdered, a massive haul of black market cigarettes seized, and a prediction of clouds with spells of rain.
My personal preference would be a colon then followed by semicolons: It was the usual round-up of non-news: Dreamers had finally made it onto the legal drugs category; a court case throwing doubt over the use of MRE to secure convictions; three killed in hit and run; restaurant owner murdered; massive haul of black market cigarettes seized; and the weather outlook was cloudy with spells of rain. Normal commas work, but you've got a series of independent clauses and semicolons generally indicate more of a full stop between the two. Though you don't see semicolons very often in fiction, so they might stand out to some people and, correct or not, you really don't want to draw too much attention to grammar and punctuation, so commas may be the more discreet option.
