semicolons

[BookStop]

No, I don't think the semicolon is the best solution (although in general I am a big fan of the semi-colon). The one thought simply does not seem to follow on the other. It seems to me that the two features -- shocking on the one hand, soft and attractive on the other -- contrast.

Yes, Teresa has said it better than I, but this is exactly what I meant

 

[Jennifer Kirk]

I love semi-colons, though I have noticed that editors in the past have erased quite a few of them from my work. I was always taught at school that they were used to connect two half sentences that are loosely related, but not closely related enough to justify a comma. The second use I was taught was in separating items in a list. I'm sure that there are other uses though I wasn't taught them. Unfortunately semi colons are becoming an endangered species; many people don't use them at all (see what I did there?).

The apostrophe seems to cause a lot of people a lot of confusion too. Am I the only person who has a permanent marker in the glove compartment of the car for correcting road signs?

 

[paranoid marvin]

I was always taught that a semi-colon was a pause for breath in trhe middle of a sentence. I like semi-colons , but I hate using colons ; especially in fiction as it makes a piece of literature seem too formal.

 

[ktabic]

*sigh*
It's disgraceful, this wilful waste of punctuation. You only have to look at some of the other forums on the Internet to see that there is a world-wide shortage of punctuation marks. The world is desperate for punctuation! And here you are, wasting two pieces of punctuation where only one is needed. What waste!

We need to ration our punctuation use like the twitter users and lolcatzers are doing



I think I correctly used a semi-colon once.