by Jennie Ruby
If there is one punctuation mark that rivals public speaking and clowns as a thing that people fear most, it is the semicolon. Maybe that is because grammar mavens and middle-school teachers tend to describe it something like this: "The semicolon functions to join somewhat causally related independent clauses within compound sentences and to separate elements of a list at least one element of which contains a comma." Ok. Got it. Well, maybe not so much. Let's break that down into what really are only two jobs for the semicolon.
The easier job to understand is when to use a semicolon in a list. Of course, normally commas separate the items on a list, like this:
- On the hike we saw squirrels, deer, and a bear. (the second comma is optional)
Sometimes, however, an item on the list might have a comma inside it for some reason. As soon as that happens, the list becomes confusing. Readers can no longer tell which items are being listed. Here is an example:
- Lyon, France, New York, and Amsterdam are the cities we will visit on the tour.
Wait a minute--France isn't a city! That's right, France is included to identify where the city Lyon is. To make this clear, we need to upgrade the commas to semicolons in order to clearly separate the list:
- Lyon, France; New York; and Amsterdam are the cities we will visit on the tour.
The other job of the semicolon is to separate two sentences that have been combined into one. Normally, you use a comma plus a joining word like and, or, nor, yet, but, or so to separate two joined sentences, like this:
- The designer added the final graphic, so the layout was almost complete.
Each half of this sentence could have been a separate sentence, but I chose to put them together because they are closely related. To be a little more arty, I could have used a semicolon instead of the comma and then left out the joining word (called a conjunction):
- The designer added the final graphic; the layout was almost complete.
That's it for the semicolon. Just two jobs: Serving as an upgrade from a comma to separate list items, and separating two sentences that have been combined into one. What's so scary about that?
About the Author: Jennie Ruby is a veteran IconLogic trainer and author with titles such as "Essentials of Access 2000" and "Editing with MS Word 2003 and Adobe Acrobat 7" to her credit. Jennie specializes in electronic editing. At the American Psychological Association, she was manager of electronic publishing and manager of technical editing and journal production. Jennie has an M.A. from George Washington University and is a Certified Technical Trainer (Chauncey Group). She is a publishing professional with 20 years of experience in writing, editing and desktop publishing.
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