Semicolons

I openly admit I have an irrational aversion to a punctuation mark, the semi-colon. In my own defense I was conditioned to view semicolons as an annoying intrusion into an otherwise cohesive manuscript.

Early in my career I suffered under what I call a semicolon addict. I would write a manuscript, and the proofer - yes the proofer - would smugly sprinkle semicolons throughout to "fix" what I had written. Besides not understanding the limits of a proofer's duties, she made reading my best stuff feel like riding in a car with a manual transmission driven by someone who had never driven a stick. I would ask how the semicolons were improving the original manuscript, and I'd be told things like, "The semicolon is a very effective but underused punctuation mark. Most people just don't understand how to use them."

When the addict would find an article that discussed the use of semicolons, this passive-aggressive note-leaver would copy the article and place it on my desk, complete with highlighting the areas where semicolons were discussed. I complained to the editors but this person had been with the company forever, and all they gave me was a sympathetic shoulder shrug.

The granddaddy of offenses occurred when an exact quote with a series of commas was rewritten to insert semicolons instead of commas.

One day when I arrived at work I found a punctuation article written by a newspaper columnist that wrote weekly business writing articles. References to semicolons were highlighted of course, and the columnist said to "use punctuation to convey the magic of your words," suggesting that random use of punctuation was just fine.

Being somewhat annoyed I wrote a letter to the columnist explaining my suffering under the semicolon addict. I offered my opinion that it was a mistake to suggest there are no rules in terms of punctuation usage in business writing;

Two days later I got a call from the columnist. He enjoyed reading my letter, which he found amusing. He said he was going to write a followup clarifying some of the points and was just calling to let me know.

Uh oh. Obviously the semicolon addict read these articles, probably every Friday. I assumed she would read the followup article. I knew I was going to be in trouble deep at work. The kind man agreed to keep me anonymous. There was a good chance this person would not recognize herself as the subject of the followup article. Nevertheless I'd peek around my door all week thinking I'd see her barreling down the hall toward my office waving an article in her fist.

When I progressed to the position of managing the editorial department, I implemented a rule where each writer was allotted two unapproved semicolons per year, with any additional semicolon requiring approval after submission of a Semicolon Authorization Form in triplicate, signed off on by another author and the Executive Editor (me). I also added a rule to the Writers Manual, "If you write a sentence that contains a semicolon, rewrite the sentence."

I heard a university professor discuss use of semicolons. He said that many new professors use semicolons heavily to indicate how smart they are before they're tenured, then they lose the semicolon as soon as tenure begins.

That's the story of my irrational aversion to semicolons.

What good are semicolons anyway? Thoughts?

 

Hmm. At this point, I'm almost afraid to publicly admit that I use them.

Twenty-five years ago, I was preparing to teach an eight week creative writing course at a community college. I asked one of the regular professors if I might sit in on one of her classes as part of my prep, her classes being much sought after. The class I attended was what is cruelly referred to as Bonehead English and the topic was semicolons. To find myself spellbound by the topic was not something I expected, but I drank in every word. The eighteen-year-old students in the course rarely took their eyes off the teacher, not because she was a threat, but because she was that good. I have been a devotee of properly used semicolons ever since, and that professor has been one of my best friends for two decades.

Embrace the semicolon. No telling what it will bring you in life.

 

I use them -- sparingly -- in non-fiction. I don't think they serve any useful purpose in fiction.

 

I must admit here that I'm addicted to the em-dash. I'd call myself a recovering addict though—I do try to limit their use. The reason this is relevant to this thread is becuase the em-dash is often used in places where a semicolon might otherwise be used. But to me semicolons and full colons seem more suited to business correspondence or something technical, maybe movie titles (Avatar: The Last Airbender) or book titles.

I never did really embrace the colon, but if I did I would try to subject my work to a colonoscopy, find those suckers and root 'em out—flush them away!

 

I use them a lot in technical writing. It’s common in those to have sentences with two sort of related things that are disjointed where a comma doesn’t cut it.

As a coder, I sometime accidentally use semicolons as periods. Going back and editing my stuff sometimes I’ll just notice that random paragraphs have no periods and I mindlessly finalized sentences with them.

 

it does seem a bit irrational

I use them when they serve a useful purpose, and I find that they often do. It's just a sort of hinge between two independent clauses; often a period seems too abrupt, and a semi-colon introduces a little more grace or lightness into the writing. It indicates that the two clauses form a single thought. It makes things less disjointed.

 

I don't use them. I didn't really know what they were for before a quick google search lol. I would now if it came up in something I was working on.

One thing I would say though is that underuse is just as bad as over. Be kind of ridiculous to suffer under a semi-colon addict only to get free and purge them all from all writing.

 

I wouldn't say they're worthless; it's just that there are alternatives that work equally well.

 

In my naivete I replace them with an em line. But first I look to see if I can break the sentence up. If not, then double tap, in goes the em line.
I survived four novels that way and was never marked wrong by an editor or a beta reader.

 

I give you—the em-dash.

Not as formal as a tie, but can serve the same purpose without bringing that too-formal stigma.

 

@Xoic
In my view the em-dash is a bigger speed bump than the semicolon. I use both, mind you, but with different intention. The em-dash for greater separation and emphasis, the semicolon for better glide and connectivity.

 

I undestand that. But to me it's more about formality I suppose. An em-dash feels friendly and informal. Yes, a strong separator—stronger than a comma. But it doesn't feel out of place in a story the way colons and semi-colons usually do. I see those insidious little double-dots or their sneaky little cousins the comma-dots, and I assume I've stumbled into a Victorian essay or a technical paper. I guess @Seven Crowns is right—when used expertly they can blend in too, but I just avoid them on general principle. Maybe one day I'll warm up to them, I don't know.

EDIT—I'll add that I didn't even really notice the semicolon in @Naomasa298 's post above; the one I responded to. Maybe I should re-assess my bias. It might help me get over my em-dash addiction.

 

Hello,
Because the em-dash is frequently used in locations where a semicolon would otherwise be used, this is pertinent to this subject. Semicolons and full colons, on the other hand,

 

There was this book... no name comes to me. Anyway, among the author's many faults were multipage digressions parenthesized via em-dash, which in turn had their own parentheticial digressions within. This has scarred me. Em dashes are ugly, too, standing proud from the body like skid marks on a highway. The em dash says STOP or OH AND, while the semicolon is a sensual invititation. I don't understand why so many people see it as formal or stuffy.

Both em-dash and semicolon are definitely too easy to depend on, though. They should be applied sparingly in prose.

 

I was portraying a new character in an RPG yet unknown to my friends while in voice chat with them. After a brief conversation one of them laughed up and called me out on being too obvious; apparently I am the single and only person using semicolons regularly in RPG conversations.

I admit, I'm an addict.

The reason at large is semicolon's ability to convey a conversational break. In my opinion, they can enhance a dialogue by signifying the tone/diction of the partner.

 

Great topic. I probably use the em-dash too much and have had to weed a bunch of them out. I refuse to use the semi-colon. I reserve the em-dash for sentences that I really want to emphasize a point in to give it a pop. In short, I'm an em-das addict.

 

as @newjerseyrunner did, I did a lot of technical writing, and I used a lot of semicolons to join up two separate but disjointed thoughts. However, in fictional writing, I avoid them except for a very good reason, likewise for em-dashes. I edited one person's manuscript, and he used em-dashes to great excess, sometimes several per paragraph. I found it distracting and unnecessary. I do use a lot of ellipses ( ... ) in dialogue, to indicate a pause in speaking.

 

The observation from @Seven Crowns is key: it depends a lot on voice.

Margaret Atwood excels in using them. At times she elevates them to high style, which would of course be entirely inappropriate in writing mass-market fiction. They don't have a lot of place at the so-called 12th-grade reading level, which is nominally the standard for conventional writing in popular fiction.

 

You mean fifth or sixth grade reading level? When I think of 12th grade 'reading level' I think of stuff like Frankenstein, not current popular fiction.

 

That was so for you and me—or actually, I think one of my classes assigned it in 8th or 9th grade—but I don't believe it's the current definition. You can submit your work at readable.io for a quite detailed analysis, even without a subscription, I believe. I don't particularly recommend that as a general rule, especially as I don't write popular fiction, but it gives you a good idea what specialists say "the average reader" reads easily. Whether they're right about it, I have no idea.

When I pick up a bestseller at random in the grocery store, the language generally strikes me as well below what my classes were expected to read in 12th grade. That was public school, though in a state and district with unusually good public schools. I know that scoring of SATs has been eased ("re-centered" upward, ETS says) either twice or three times since I took them, so it's reasonable to surmise that the definition of 12th grade reading level has also been eased by whoever makes that definition.

Or am I wrong about the level that agents and editors target for popular fiction? Is it perhaps 8th grade? I thought I had heard 12th, but I'm not all that sure.

 

I agree that semicolons don't have much use in fiction, which is probably why Kurt Vonnegut eschewed their use.

But the best analysis of semicolons (and the various dashes, for that matter) can be found in Benjamin Dreyer's Dreyer's English. It's accurate, concise, and a hell of a lot of fun to read, like all the rest of the book.