Blast from the Past: Grammar 101 for Semicolons

[whymzycal.livejournal.com]

Happy Friday, and welcome to another Blast from the Past! Today we'll briefly review the most common uses of the semicolon, first covered in a very comprehensive Grammar 101 post by skroberts.

The semicolon, which looks like the offspring of a colon and a comma, like this ( ; ), is stronger than a comma but weaker than a period, and has several uses in English.

The first way we usually use the semicolon is to join two grammatically complete sentences that are closely connected in terms of their content:

Hermione regretted saying that Ron had the emotional range of a teaspoon; recent events proved he'd graduated to the emotional range of a tablespoon.

An exception to this rule is when both sentences are very short and very similar in tone or form:

Ron was confused, Harry was annoyed.

The second way we usually use the semicolon—which is an offshoot of the use demonstrated above—is to join two closely connected sentences with a transitional phrase or conjunctive adverb (things like in fact, still, for example or thus, therefore, however):

Dean had always hated witches; in fact, he always claimed his first words as a baby had been, "Witches suck!"

McGonagall was rapidly losing her patience with the Weasley twins; however, instead of curbing their activities, this merely spurred them to more daring feats of tomfoolery.

The semicolon can also act as a comma in a series of items when one or more of those items themselves contain an internal comma:

Castiel was in the middle of explaining the reason for the platypus when the waitress showed up carrying a heavy tray. "Okay," she said, "I have a double cheeseburger with bacon, cheddar, Swiss, and extra pickles; a garden salad, dressing on the side; and a side order of fries."

Finally, a lesser known use of the semicolon is to use it in place of a comma when you want a stronger, weightier stop than a comma alone would give you:

Sam rolled his eyes as Dean chatted up another hot LARPer. There wasn't anything sexy about his pickup lines; but at least there wasn't anything deliberately chauvinistic in them, either.

However, since we have a lot of other options to show emphasis, like using em-dashes (— ), starting a new sentence, or even choosing stronger words, using a semicolon to indicate a stronger pause should be attempted only on rare occasions when nothing else will do. After all, overuse of semicolons can make your fic look cluttered and be off-putting to some readers.

For more about semicolons, including some grammarian humor, you can go to our community tag for semicolons, or visit a reference site like Grammar Girl, the OWL at Purdue, or The Writing Center at the University of Wisconsin.


Sources:
Garner's Modern American Usage 3rd ed., Bryan A. Garner