Semicolons can also be extremely helpful for lists with internal punctuation, especially in technical writing. I recently wrote the following sentence in some documentation:
By default, Gutenberg will look for three templates:
index.html, which is applied to the site homepage;
section.html, which is applied to all sections (any
HTML page generated by creating a directory within
your content directory); and page.html, which is
applied to all pages (any HTML page generated by
creating a .md file within your content directory).
Omitting semicolons from that sentence would have made it much harder to understand, at least in my view.
Technical writing is a bit of a different beast: you’re writing both to instruct first-time readers and to serve as an authoritative reference for people who have read the document or are otherwise already familiar with the subject.
That's a good point. In general prose, I try to avoid a lot of lists and tables precisely because it sort of screams "manual" or something else dry. But, I agree, that it's often easier to parse a bullet list especially in technical writing and other straightforward communication of information.
you mention quite a formal list (introduced by a colon) but it also serves well in simple lists:
The dinner was attended by Ms. A, the President of the Board of Education, Mr. B, the Vice-President, and other dignitaries.
Becomes much clearer when expressed
The dinner was attended by Ms. A, the President of the Board of Education; Mr. B, the Vice-President; and other dignitaries.
and is allowed in this construct though rare. Basically, whenever there is a comma inside a comma-separated term you can turn the higher-level commas into semicolons to indicate this. Makes things super-clear.
Personally, I'd probably have used parentheses for the dependent which clauses rather than commas. But, yes, there are situations where you have lists of things that sometimes have to embed commas and then it makes sense to separate the items with semicolons.
I quite entertained the same point of view of the author about semicolons. The best use of them is when they're used sparingly, hence carrying more precise weight and meaning.
Now there is something quite peculiar about that punctuation mark's naming, which has some dissonant trait of causality (what colons are used for), and always found the French name "point-virgule" (period-comma) much more apt.
The naming fits if you think about the implications of the mark on the flow of a sentence. A colon is a pretty hard stop when I read, while a comma is barely a pause. A semicolon is in between the two; you don't stop as long as the colon, but you pause a little longer than a comma (did I use it correctly? ;P )
I pause longer for colons than for periods. Colons are less common and often join what are really two sentences, meaning something like "read this sentence in the context of what was said in the first."
To me, exclamation mark, full stop and question mark are of equal precedence; they are higher than colon, which is higher than semi-colon, and that is higher than comma.
If you are writing with precision in mind then, "I tend to over use (sic) semicolons because they help convey my fractured way of thinking." will suffice.
If you are writing dialogue, then what you wrote is fine. (You can write pretty much whatever you like in dialogue.)
The point is that writing is generally use to express something to the reader, so use whatever tools you have to accomplish that goal.
What’s fractured about “I use X because it helps me do Y” though? The semicolon didn’t convey that efficiently to me, but it did make the overuse point :)
I love the writing style of this author. Experiencing a well-written bit of content is refreshing, and honestly makes me want to go write something. I haven't felt like this since I moved from primary school fiction to adult novels.
I love this feeling! Go write. I've learned over time to harness this even when I find something poorly written, almost as a rebellion and an effort to do it better. :D
For the average reader, semicolons are simply archaic, and there is always a contemporary — which is why you don't see them that often.
When they're used to indicate a separate larger than a comma but less than separate sentences, an em-dash works just a well without any of the pretense: from
"My wife would like tea; I would prefer coffee."
to
"My wife would like tea — I would prefer coffee."
And using them to separate list items which themselves contain commas is asking the reader to do too much work to parse things visually, since semicolons are so similar to commas. Literature can use parentheses or em dashes, while technical material can use lists. Observe how much easier all of the following transformations are to parse at a glance:
The people present were Jamie, a man from New Zealand; John, the milkman's son; and George, a gaunt kind of man with no friends.
The people present were Jamie (a man from New Zealand), John (the milkman's son), and George (a gaunt kind of man with no friends).
Several fast food restaurants can be found within the following cities: London, England; Paris, France; Dublin, Ireland; Madrid, Spain.
Several fast food restaurants can be found within the following cities: 1) London, England, 2) Paris, France, 3) Dublin, Ireland, and 4) Madrid, Spain.
Here are three examples of familiar sequences: one, two, and three; a, b, and c; first, second, and third.
Here are three examples of familiar sequences:
- one, two, and three
- a, b, and c
- first, second, and third.
In academic papers you can sometimes wind up having such hierarchies of information and restricted space (e.g. in footnotes) that semicolons become necessary, just like legal documents use § to mark sections... but academic writing and citations has all sorts of conventions of its own.
I guess pretense is in the reader, because I read and write semicolons without any feelings of pretense.
There's a different level of contrast, separation, and connection communicated by a semicolon vs. an em dash (not to mention vs. a period or comma or parenthesis). I, for one, am happy to have as wide an array of options as possible considering how central textual communication is to my work and personal life.
The semicolon version reads like you're just providing information about both your preferences. The em-dash version reads like you're disagreeing with your wife. Em-dash tends to indicate that the second clause somehow applies to the first clause.
> When they're used to indicate a separate larger than a comma but less than separate sentences, an em-dash works just a well without any of the pretense
It is a kind of snobbery to impute pretense to the use of semicolons over dashes; it may simply be that writer’s natural preference or habit to prefer semicolons.
Where does this worrying about coming across as pretentious end?
The purpose of writing is to communicate, and a writer has to be realistic (i.e. worry) about all aspects of how their writing choices will be interpreted.
My natural preference or habit might be to swear all the time, but when I write an HN comment I'd suppress that in order to be taken seriously. Semicolons aren't as strong as swearing, but it's hard to argue they aren't associated with a certain level of pretense in the general public's mind.
I’ve been taught to use the em dash to set off a point of emphasis, disagreement, or a caveat. So I parse your first example as: My wife would like tea; I would prefer coffee.
In modern usage, you could probably substitute an em dash. But, if a writer did that and I were editing, I'd probably go with the semicolon. A period would probably be fine too.
I usually think of em dashes as a substitute for parentheses.
There is no need to use a semi-colon: "Roses are red, violets are blue, I drink coffee, my wife drinks tea."
I think that ; is only really handy for delimiting lists: Firstly, I would like to thank the Queen <for>; Secondly, I would like to thank the President <for>; etc.
I think that the name is a bit of a pain: a colon is used for <statement>: <and here is why>. A semi colon is used for lists. However, the name seems to imply some sort of half interval and so people use them as an intermediary between , and .
> an em-dash works just a well without any of the pretense [of the semicolon]
The author makes a clear distinction between the semicolon and the em-dash.
> And using them to separate list items which themselves contain commas is asking the reader to do too much work
The article is specifically about prose, and at no point suggest using semicolons for lists, although I think you overstate the difficulty in parsing your first example.
While I don't use semicolons often, to me they are useful for three things: ordered lists, where options are related or parenthetical; to conjoin or inline an example; or a kind of silent differential to orient the idea in a paragraph in a new direction. It's not relevant in business anymore, but useful in tech writing.
In business, the tone and style of email is all about affecting power in environments where people pretend there are no rules that would imply accountability. The result is an absurd competition of who can be more brief, less coherent, and affect the ostentatious transfer of the burden of comprehension to the bottom dog.
(Why yes, it was tempting to use the mark in place of those commas. But I prefer the style of putting spaces around the em-dash, and I fear being downvoted into oblivion by any pedants who strongly adhere to the no-space norms. So commas it is.)
The line between how punctuation has evolved (Classic Latin didn't use any punctuation) until modern days and, programming languages syntaxes is indeed very subtle.
I sit at the table after dinner and find myself from time to time taking nuts or raisins out of the dish and eating them. My dinner properly is over, and in the heat of the conversation I am hardly aware of what I do; but the perception of the fruit, and the fleeting notion that I may eat it, seem fatally to bring the act about.
Here's the way I'd have written it:
I sit at the table after dinner and find myself from time to time taking nuts or raisins out of the dish and eating them. My dinner properly is over and in the heat of the conversation I am hardly aware of what I do. But the perception of the fruit and the fleeting notion that I may eat it, seem fatally to bring the act about.
Your version has a run-on sentence (two independent clauses joined by a bare conjunction without a conversation comma), but, yes, substituting a full stop for the semicolon joining independent clauses is acceptable (the difference is in degree of implied attachment between the independent clauses, so it's not strictly equivalent, but neither is definitively superior.)
Or Go! I've been doing a lot of JS at work, and Go at home; I recently rewrote an android app in Flutter, and it's just weird for the IDE to insist on semicolons after happily giving up on them :-)
Jane Austen's "magnificent opening sentence of Persuasion" was 102 words long. I found it confusing. Replacing all the semicolons with periods, made it easy and enjoyable reading.
But modern style definitely tends toward short sentences. With a lot of periods. Even if you create sentence fragments. Sort of Hemingway-esque.
Which does tend to deprecate semi-colons. I enjoyed Eats, Shoots and Leaves. But, as a participant in my company's semi-formal writing style group, I found a lot of the examples contrived and overly complex. As in programming, once you get into trying to figure out the official precedence of operators, you've already lost the game. Rework things so the answer is immediately obvious to people who don't remember whether booleans are computed before exponents.
I like'em (hermy or not). A semicolon marks the end of a phrase; it promises that what follows it continues the same thought (not something brand-new). (In most writing, a period makes no such promise.)
In high school, we were taught to use semicolons in place of the word "furthermore"; they also tend to be more specific than em-dashes -- which can be used haphazardly.
