I'm editing a business report, which has the following sentence: "The consumption volume of global wood products stood at 574.7 million cubic meters in 2010; an increase of 2.2% over 2009." Should that semicolon be there, or just a comma? I'd be grateful for any advice. Thanks in advance!
It's one of those places where lots of things could be used. Yes, it could be a colon. It could even be a dash, or the last bit could be in parentheses. But a comma is the simplest and least obtrusive, so if I were writing it then I would use a comma unless I had a particular stylistic reason to use something else. If I were editing it, though, I'd leave the semicolon alone. It's permissible, and I'd assume the original author had made a considered choice.
Thanks for the replies, folks. I had wondered about using an m-dash, but I think I'll go with the comma. It's written by someone whose first language isn't English, and I guess the semicolon probably isn't a completely informed choice!
I use this simple rule. If there are two independence sentences, that can stand on their own, that are spliced by a comma then use a semicolon or else it is a comma splice. In your example: "The consumption volume of global wood products stood at 574.7 million cubic meters in 2010; an increase of 2.2% over 2009." These are not two independent sentences so you should use a comma.
True, but a comma splice is acceptable if what is being spliced is very short. The usual form of Julius Caeser's classic quote is "I came, I saw, I conquered." Semicolons, full stops or exclamation marks would outweigh the actual words, so lighter marks -- commas -- are usual.
