Punctuation and Professionalism: Semicolons

For more on semicolons:

Read

The Most Feared Punctuation Mark on Earth (The Oatmeal, 2020)

Listen

Divide and Conquer (Revisionist History Podcast, 2018)

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• Mary Sue Evans

Here are some additional pieces of advice about using semicolons. Post your favorite in Comments.

1. “Used well, the semicolon makes a powerful impression; misused, it betrays your ignorance.”

—Mary Norris, Between You & Me: Confessions of a Comma Queen (2015)

2. “[William] James’s paragraphs, as lucid and unpretentious as can be, are divided and subdivided, as intricately structured as the anatomical diagrams he includes in ‘Psychology: Briefer Course.’ Semicolons, along with exclamation points and dashes and whole sackfuls of commas, are, for him, vital tools in keeping what he called the ‘stream of thought’ from appearing to the reader as a wild torrent.”

—Ben Dolnick, “Semicolons: A Love Story” (2012)

3. “Think of the semicolon as a long comma, or a wimpy period.”

—Merrill Perlman, To Semicolon, or Not to Semicolon (2015)