Punctuation Tip of the Day: The Semi-Colon Revisited

As promised, here is some additional guidance about using the semi-colon. Before I get to the semi-colon guidance--actually to lay the groundwork for it--I need to mention another punctuation mark.

This flimsiest of punctuation marks, the comma, barely slows a reader down. We hardly see them. This is the reason your English teacher was so horrified when you made what she called "comma splices"--you used the wimpy comma to separate two independent clauses, two groups of words that each could have been a sentence. Shame on you!

There really is logic here. If we are to digest "main ideas," we have to come to a significant pause between them.

I write well. I enjoy writing. I teach others to write.

Those are all complete sentences, all complete thoughts. The periods help readers stop and think.

And so does the semi-colon, and this was yesterday's Punctuation Tip of the Day. You use a semi-colon to separate independent clauses. If you're tempted to use a comma, think twice! Remember how you got dinged in the eighth grade for those comma splices! Day after tomorrow I'll tell you when you can use a comma between independent clauses, but you're just not ready for it yet!

Here is Semi-Colon Use #2: You use a semi-colon with an animal called a "conjunctive adverb" between independent clauses. Again, you can use a semi-colon all by itself if the relationship between the two clauses is clear and straightforward.

For example--

He ran all the way to the store in his heavy jacket; he was exhausted, soaked through with sweat, when he arrived there.

The relationship between the ideas is pretty clear: he ran all the way and got all sweaty in the process. When the relationship is a bit less clear, you use a conjunctive adverb.

Common conjunctive adverbs are--

therefore
consequently
hence
nonetheless
accordingly
however
nevertheless
thus
moreover

So the second major use of the semi-colon is to join one independent clause to another in a sentence with a conjunctive adverb.

For example--

I was dead tired when I arrived home; however, I still had housework to do before going to bed.

It may help you to remember the definition of "conjunctive": it is "serving to join together." I think of the prefix "con" meaning "with," and I think of "junctive" as a meeting place (as in "junction"). So, a conjunctive adverb is an adverb that "joins together." There. Remember that.

You are such a sophisticated semi-colon user now! There's one more fairly common use of the semi-colon, and we'll cover that in tomorrow's post.