whenever i search it up its like “erhm actuchually??! you are supposed to use a semicolon between closely related independent clauses which are not joined by a coordinating conjunction!!🤓☝”
EXCUSE ME? I ONLY KNOW LIKE 5 WORDS IN THAT SENTENCE
In: Other
At the end of a line, but not all languages. Some would except both with or without the semicolon.
Semicolons combine two sentences into one; they can be useful to show the two are connected.
Everyone’s given you their formal grammatical use with lots of great examples. So I’ll just say – don’t use them, they’re a very unnecessary bit of grammar. They offer almost nothing that another construction wouldn’t do better, usually just a period.
Punctuation exists so that we can look at written material and understand how a speaker would use pauses in our language. All of the terms like clauses and sentences are just ways that we label speech conventions.
Say these out loud:
“I’m going to the grocery store so we’ll have buttermilk for the pancakes.”
“I’m going to the grocery store, so let me know if you think of anything we need.”
“Go ahead and watch the show without me; I’m going to the grocery store.”
“I don’t have enough time tonight to watch the show with you. I need to go to the grocery store.”
Saying them aloud, you will notice that you create pauses naturally in the same places where the punctuation is located. That’s not because you see the punctuation and know to insert a pause. It’s because you speak the language, and the language includes the pauses. The punctuation is just there so that a reader can see where the pauses go and understand how long the pauses are supposed to be.
Longer pauses indicate that you are finished with one thought and now are taking us to a connected thought. That’s why, a lot of times, you can swap out a semicolon for a period. The clauses and sentences within one paragraph are like a row of dominoes. Each domino is an individual thought. They are all affected by the thought that came before, and they push forward to affect the thought that comes afterward.
And paragraphs–units separated by the biggest pauses of all–are groupings of thoughts that work together to get one big chunk of information across. That’s like moving on to another grouping of dominoes. When you look at it on the page, there’s a big visual gap, just like the gap between groupings of dominoes, which prevents one group from tumbling into another. Commas, semicolons, and periods are the smaller gaps between dominoes within one paragraph.
It’s been half a century since I’ve attended a learnatorium, but I use them where I would pause a bit longer if I was speaking the sentence out loud.
They’re like a period but not; if it COULD be two standalone sentences but you choose to make them into one, a semicolon is the weld.
There are many good uses for semicolons in this thread; however, I have yet to see anyone mention the semicolon’s use with a conjunctive adverb.
Off the top of my head, the only conjunctive adverb I use frequently is “however.” It is a lazy way to take a run on sentence with 3-4 independent clauses and make it less bad. ; however,
We use semicolons for independent clause joining and clarity in complicated lists; however, my favorite use is the conjunctive adverb.
A semicolon can be used to join independent clauses; to clarify complicated lists; or to introduce a conjunctive adverb.
It’s a super comma, use it like a comma and period at the same time. Like a pause that’s longer than a comma pause but shorter than a full stop.
I think that there is another valid use, right? Like this:
You can use them to group two independent clauses together; you can use them to connect sentences together to add context they are related; and with a conjunction you can group together multiple sentences that are part of a list. They can all be individual sentences, but with a comma instead of semicolon it would be a run-on if there are more than two.
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