Semicolon Distress

I was working on my undergraduate degree, sitting in a classroom full of English majors, and focusing on the teacher standing at the front of the classroom. She was our professor’s assistant and had taken over teaching that day. She wanted to talk about poetry, we wanted to talk about the grades we had gotten on our most recent assignments, and we ended up talking about semicolons. Kind of.

“When do you use a semicolon?” one of the students asks.

“Great question,” the teacher says. “But what I really want to talk about is poetry.”

“But you say that semicolons are used in poetry, so why can’t we first talk about semicolons?” another student says. The class hums their agreements, and the teacher stops, looks at us all, and mumbles something that made absolutely no sense to anyone. 

Which gave us the understanding that she didn’t know. And if a teacher doesn’t know, how could her students possibly know? I’m sure there were those in the class who knew the grammar rules of semicolons, and if the teacher wasn’t completely self-involved, she would have opened the discussion and let the students teach the master and the rest of the class. But as it was, we didn’t get any answers. And to be honest, she almost ruined poetry for everyone, too.

So, here’s a great way to decide when to use a semi-colon.

·         Do you want to put two full sentences together (also known as ‘independent clauses’)? Either use a semi-colon or use a comma with a conjunction.

Such as:

The situation is perilous; there’s only one chance to escape.

• Both sides of the semicolon are independent clauses. “The situation is perilous.” Is a complete sentence. And so is: “There’s only one chance to escape.” Separate them with a semi-colon and you’re good as gold.

But, if you really don’t want to use a semicolon because you’re mad at all the trouble they’ve caused you, or you think they are pretentious, you can use a comma. Just make sure you throw in a conjunction after the comma.

Such as:

The situation is perilous, and there’s only one chance to escape.

• Don’t forget that conjunction. Remember School House Rock? I can still hear the song “Conjunction Junction, what’s your function, hooking up words and phrases and clauses.” (Most common conjunctions: and, but, or, for, neither, nor, yet, because)

·         Another way to use semicolons is when you have a list that needs commas already.

Such as:

Throughout my lucky life, I have been to Dublin, Ireland; Rome, Italy; London, Cambridge, Bath, and Canterbury, England; Barcelona, Spain; Santiago de Compostela, Spain; many towns in the Caribbean, and all over the United States.

• The commas are separating the city names from the country names, as they usually do, but since this is a list, the list items are separated by semicolons. If they were separated by commas, like most lists are, it would be way too confusing with all the commas all over the place. Thank goodness for semicolons.

Knowing why you’re using a semicolon helps to know when to use them. It’s not as daunting as you think, or as pretentious as all that. Take a chance and use one. If all else fails, don’t worry, we have grammar check now!

 Cheers! And have a great weekend!