The Semicolon

The Semicolon (;) is a punctuation mark that is used for linking sentences or parts of sentences that have a relationship between them or that are closely related.

This punctuation mark usually indicates a pause of a duration longer that that of a comma and shorter than that of a period.

Let us now look at some examples and circumstances in which this punctuation mark is used.

To connect independent clauses that are closely related

An independent clause is a clause that can stand on its own as a sentence. But sometimes, instead of writing two different sentences, you may decide to join them because they compliment each other. In other words, the sentence which follows adds more information to the previous one or picks up where the other left.

For example, look at the following two sentences:

The cat caught the mouse.
The woman was appeased.

What is true is that these two sentences can stand on their own and still make sense, but because they are related to each other, you may choose to join them thus:

The cat caught the mouse; the woman was appeased.

The semicolon indicates that the woman was appeased because the cat caught the mouse.

If a conjunction is used to connect the two independent clauses, and a comma is used in at least one of the clauses, then a semicolon should precede the conjunction.

The tall, burly man wept; and the passersby were moved with pity.

We could rewrite the sentence above in this manner (without the conjunction):

The tall, burly man wept; the passersby were moved with pity.

Sometimes, adverbs such as hence, however, and therefore can be used to connect two clauses. Therefore, in situations where one of these connectives in used in the second clause, the two clauses should be separated by a semicolon:

The tall, burly man wept; hence, the children lost their fear of him.

Phrases or words that introduce a list

Phrases that introduce a list, when they do not occur at the beginning of a sentence, should be preceded by a semicolon:

Mr. Jere has everything a man would kill to have; namely, a car, a mansion with a swimming pool, an expensive phone, and a very beautiful wife.

In a list of items

Normally, when making a list of items, you use commas. However in certain circumstances, some of the items in the list may have a description that is set off by commas. In such a situation, you need to use semicolons to separate all the items in that list:

There were a number of interesting people at the wedding: Todd, the fireman; Nancy, the owner of Doe Cattle Runch; and Mr. Tigers, the headmaster of Sky Limit Trust School.

With Parenthesis or Inverted Commas

When a semicolon is used in conjunction with parenthesis, or quotation marks, it should come after the closing parenthesis or quotation marks:

My best friend loves reading (he can read for hours on end); surprisingly, he hates writing.

Trevor had what he termed "the heebie-jeebies"; he failed to deliver his speech.

The semicolon is, as you can see, a very important punctuation mark that you cannot afford to neglect. Therefore pay particular attention to the four areas that I have mentioned above. If you do, your written work will improve tremendously.

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