Posted on 05/21/2025 12:53:11 PM PDT by Red Badger
A recent study has found a 50% decline in the use of semicolons over the last two decades. The decline accelerates a longterm trend: “In 1781, British literature featured a semicolon roughly every 90 words; by 2000, it had fallen to one every 205 words. Today, there’s just one semicolon for every 390 words.”
Further research reported that 67% of British students never or rarely use a semicolon; more than 50% did not know how to use it. Just 11% of respondents described themselves as frequent users.
These findings may not be definitive. According to the Guardian, the Google Books Ngram Viewer database, which surveys novels and nonfiction, indicates that “semicolon use in English rose by 388% between 1800 and 2006, before falling by 45% over the next 11 years. In 2017, however, it started a gradual recovery, with a 27% rise by 2022.”
Yet when you put the punctuation mark itself into the database, rather than the word “semicolon,” you get a quite different result – one that looks very much like a steady decline.
Virulent detractors
The semicolon first appeared in 1494, so it has been around for a long time. So have arguments about it.
Its dectractors can be quite virulent. It is sometimes taken as a sign of affected elitism. Adrian Mole, the pretentious schoolboy protagonist of Sue Townsend’s popular novels, says snobbishly of Barry Kent, the skinhead bully at his school: “He wouldn’t know what a semicolon was if it fell into his beer.” Kurt Vonnegut (whose novels are not entirely free of semicolons) said semicolons represented “absolutely nothing” and using them just showed that you “went to college”.
Other writers have expressed pure animosity. American journalist James Kilpatrick denounced the semicolon “girly,” “odious,” and the “most pusillanimous, sissified utterly useless mark of punctuation ever invented.”
The utility of this much maligned punctuation mark in contemporary prose has been called into question. British author Ben McIntyre has claimed Stephen King “wouldn’t be seen dead in a ditch with a semicolon.”
He obviously hasn’t read page 32 of King’s wonderful book On Writing, where King uses semicolons in three sentences in a row.
Impeccable balance
Before I defend the semicolon, it is worth clarifying what it actually does. Its two uses are as follows:
1) it separates independent clauses, but establishes a relation between them. It suggests that the statements are too closely connected to stand as separate sentences. For example: “Speech is silver; silence is golden.”
2) it can be used to clarify a complicated list. For example: “Remember to check your grammar, especially agreement of subjects and verbs; your spelling, especially of tricky words such as ‘liaison’; and your punctuation, especially your use of the apostrophe.”
Semicolons have long played a prominent role in classic literature. Journalist Amelia Hill notes that Virginia Woolf relies heavily on semicolons in her meditation on time, Mrs. Dalloway. The novel includes more than 1000 of them, often used in unorthodox ways, to capture the flow of its protagonist’s thoughts.
Other supporters of the semicolon include Salman Rushdie, John Updike, Donna Tartt, Mark Twain, Charles Dickens and Jane Austen. Novelist Philip Hensher has celebrated the semicolon as “a cherished tool, elegant and rational.” In 1953, theatre critic Kenneth Tynan called it “the prize-winning supporting crutch of English prose”.
In his essay Semicolons: A Love Story, Ben Dolnick refers to William James’s deft use of semicolons to pile on the clauses. He claims this is like saying to a reader, who is already holding one bag of groceries, “Here, I know it’s a lot, but can you take another?”
“The image of the grocery bags,” observed Mary Norris, a highly respected copyeditor at the New Yorker, “reinforces the idea that semicolons are all about balance.” Harvard professor Louis Menand has praised as “impeccable” the balancing semicolon on a public service placard (allegedly amended by hand) that exhorted subway riders not to leave their newspapers behind on the train: “Please put it in a trash can; that’s good news for everyone.”
The poet Lewis Thomas beautifully captures the elegance of a well-used semicolon in his essay Notes on Punctuation:
The semicolon tells you there is still some question about the preceding full sentence; something needs to be added. It is almost always a greater pleasure to come across a semicolon than a full stop. The full stop tells you that is that; if you didn’t get all the meaning you wanted or expected, you got all the writer intended to parcel out and now you have to move along. But with a semicolon there you get a pleasant little feeling of expectancy; there is more to come; read on; it will get clearer.
As Australian novelist David Malouf has argued, the semicolon still has a future, and an important function, in nuanced imaginative prose:
I tend to write longer sentences and use the semicolon so as not to have to break the longer sentences into shorter ones that would suggest things are not connected that I want people to see as connected. Short sentences make for fast reading; often you want slow reading.
We cannot do without the semicolon. The Apostrophe Protection Society is going along very strongly. I would be more than happy to join a Semicolon Supporting Society.
Roslyn Petelin, Honorary Associate Professor in Writing, The University of Queensland. She does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.
I love semicolons; they’re important.
Chris PlantE - “They love their colons!”
Semi-Colons (;) can be interchangable with Colons (:), especially in the way most people use them nowadays.
All colons present a word or phrase for definition and/or continuity of the overall message.
The few times I’ve tried reading and understanding German, I leave thinking the Umlat is mainly just for ornamentation and to add a little style. I know it usually signifies a ‘long’ vowel sound or an expanded sound. Sometimes, it’s just there, over a particular word, because it always has been there.
Our
Semicolons
Texting and email use has been the main reason that punctuation is disappearing.
Semi-colons will always be here. Only lazy people don’t learn how to use them. What the hell is happening to our beautiful language?
;)
A cousin had an operation that removed part of his bowel. Now he has a semi-colon................
🙂😘😏😡😩😳😰
My father had a semicolon for the last years of his life.
A semicolon is what should be used in place of a comma-splice, to bring two full thoughts together that belong together. Lots of short sentences makes for good Hemingway novels. Logical thinking, however, should flow without circular reasoning; in such situations, the semicolon creates a complete statement which combines connected thoughts, as in this sentence.
I had two operations which resulted in a similar fashion.
The worst best thing that probably happened to me.
good Hemingway novels?................There is one somewhere; I’m sure......................
Grampa was fond of the semicolon, especially after he was told the whole thing needed removal.
Smartphones..................
The words “however” and “therefore” are always preceded by a semi-colon and followed by a comma.
Many people use these words at the beginning of a sentence or replace the semi-colon with a simple comma; however, that is incorrect.
Apps like Grammarly probably think there's nothing wrong with the "Historical present tense."
From “The Elements of Style”
5. Do not join independent clauses by a comma.
If two or more clauses, grammatically complete and not joined by a conjunction, are to form a single compound sentence, the proper mark of punctuation is a semicolon.
Stevenson’s romances are entertaining; they are full of exciting adventures. It is nearly half past five; we cannot reach town before dark.
It is of course equally correct to write the above as two sentences each, replacing the semicolons by periods.
Stevenson’s romances are entertaining. They are full of exciting adventures. It is nearly half past five. We cannot reach town before dark.
If a conjunction is inserted the proper mark is a comma (Rule 4).
Stevenson’s romances are entertaining, for they are full of exciting adventures. It is nearly half past five, and we cannot reach town before dark.
A comparison of the three forms given above will show clearly the advantage of the first. It is, at least in the examples given, better than the second form, because it suggests the close relationship between the two statements in a way that the second does not attempt, and better than the third, because briefer and therefore more forcible. Indeed it may be said that this simple method of indicating relationship between statements is one of the most useful devices of composition. The relationship, as above, is commonly one of cause or of consequence.
Note that if the second clause is preceded by an adverb, such as accordingly, besides, then, therefore, or thus, and not by a conjunction, the semicolon is still required.
Two exceptions to the rule may be admitted. If the clauses are very short, and are alike in form, a comma is usually permissible:
Man proposes, God disposes. The gate swung apart, the bridge fell, the portcullis was drawn up.
Note that in these examples the relation is not one of cause or consequence. Also in the colloquial form of expression,
I hardly knew him, he was so changed,
a comma, not a semicolon, is required. But this form of expression is inappropriate in writing, except in the dialogue of a story or play, or perhaps in a familiar letter.
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