What's the deal with semicolons?

Semicolons are my single favourite piece of punctuation. They’re also one of the most perplexing; perhaps that’s why I like them so much!

Alright, I’ve had my bit of fun, but there are a lot of people who view semicolons somewhat askance because they’re not sure how to use them. As someone who does know, and uses them often, I’m here to help!

In order to understand semicolons, you first need to understand clauses, so here’s a very quick rundown. A clause is a string of words or phrases making up either a whole sentence or a segment of one. They come in two forms: dependent clauses and independent clauses. An independent clause is one that can stand as its own sentence grammatically, whereas a dependent clause cannot. Examples:

Independent:

There’s a storm coming

I’m going to tie down the trampoline

Dependent:

Although the radio says otherwise

In case the wind picks up

Every proper, grammatical sentence needs to have an independent clause, but there’s no upper limit to the total number of clauses in a sentence so long as they’re properly affixed to each other, barring good sense and readability.

Now, if you’re sticking a dependent clause to an independent clause, you’ll want to use a comma:

Although the radio says otherwise, there’s a storm coming.

I’m going to tie down the trampoline, in case the wind picks up.

But if you’ve got two independent clauses that you want to join up (which may or may not have dependent clauses attached), a comma is just not going to cut it. In this case, you need the added strength of a semicolon to avoid the horrors of a run-on sentence:

There’s a storm coming; I’m going to tie down the trampoline.

Although the radio says otherwise, there’s a storm coming; I’m going to tie down the trampoline, in case the wind picks up.

Another way to think of it is that a semicolon is used grammatically in the same places you might use a full stop (or “period”, for my American friends). So you could avoid semicolons altogether by simply breaking all of your independent clauses into their own sentences, and everyone’s happy. The reason semicolons are useful, however, is that they imply a relationship between the clauses on either side, which might affect how your sentences are read. Compare the effect of the following examples:

The sun beat down, making me sweat; I squirmed uncomfortably. Moira was glaring daggers in my direction.

The sun beat down, making me sweat. I squirmed uncomfortably; Moira was glaring daggers in my direction.

The sun beat down, making me sweat. I squirmed uncomfortably. Moira was glaring daggers in my direction.

As you can see, there’s some subtle cause and effect being communicated by the use of semicolons that would have to be spelled out otherwise. Why is the narrator squirming? Is it the hot sun that’s to blame, or Moira’s displeasure?

There’s one other place where you may commonly see semicolons, and that’s as part of a list where commas are included within at least one item, so the mighty semicolon is brought in to divide the items in way that makes the list more readable. For example:

We drove through Tallahassee, Florida; Atlanta, Georgia; St Louis, Missouri; Lansing, Michigan, in a detour that surprised us all; and finally, at the end of it all, Indianapolis, Indiana.

Hopefully this brief how-to has been enlightening for those of you who have been suspicious of semicolons; feel free to ask me any further questions you may have! And, of course, if there’s a topic you’d like me to discuss in future, send me a suggestion.

Happy writing, friends!

*I’ve written another post discussing clauses here!