An acquaintance wrote this sentence in a letter of recommendation:
Her highly professional family background; impressive academic performance; a broad spectrum of extra-curricular leadership roles; and her specific career objectives reflect her persona.
We got into an argument about the semicolons. I don’t believe they are correct; she does. She pulled the “I was a teacher” card. I wanted to say, “Yeah, I had teachers like that, too.But I still learned things”
I believe she is using the semicolons under the “in lieu of a comma to separate items in a list”, but she is using them incorrectly. I was neither a teacher, not grammarian. (And I hope to hell I didn’t make a misteak in this post!)
If each of the smaller phrases used descriptors with commas, then it would be appropriate to separate the phrases with semicolons. An example from here: I bought shiny, ripe apples; small, sweet, juicy grapes; and firm pears.
That is not the case in the OP’s sample. Those should be just commas. That sentence hurts my eyes.
If it were up to me, I would edit:
Her highly professional family background, impressive academic performance, broad spectrum of extra-curricular leadership roles, and specific career objectives reflect her persona.
That whole semicolon-separated list is the subject of the sentence, so parts of the subject are separated from the verb by one or more semicolons. :eek: They should definitely be commas. With the exception of certain special cases (such as in-text citation lists in certain house styles), you should only use semicolon list-separators in the sort of list that you begin with a colon, which are normally in the object position in a sentence, and even then semicolons are only really necessary if some of the list items are long and complex enough to contain internal commas.
I didn’t say I would write it that way, or even that it’s well-written. It’s just an example of the only circumstance semicolons would be acceptable in a list, unlike the OP’s example.
The rule for semicolons is pretty simple; a semicolon can join independent clauses. (That is, if each clause could stand alone as a sentence, a semicolon can be used to join them. Other uses may be dictated by style (particularly in technical contexts), but just slapping them in in place of commas is certainly incorrect.
No, that is not the only use for semicolons, they definitely have a legitimate use as separators in certain sorts of lists. I am not quite sure how to articulate what sort of lists (I am tempted to say ones in the object role in a sentence or clause, but I am not sure if that is right), but certainly not lists as the OP’s example, which would be perfectly fine with just commas.
I really do not like SeaDragonTattoo’s example either, even though the list there is the object, and I am hard pressed to say why it seems wrong. If the list is introduced with a colon, semicolon separators are certainly acceptable, and perhaps even preferable to commas (although I doubt whether it is a rule that only lists begun after a colon should use semicolons). SeaDragonTattoo’s example could be written like this, I think
I think that is correctly and acceptably punctuated, even if it comes off as a bit stilted. (Keeve is probably right about the best way to handle this particular example, but if you had a list with items in which the internal commas were more essential, or where some of the items contained internal "and"s, my way, with the colon, might be better.)
Yeah, that’s the kind of usage I meant to encapsulate in “technical contexts.” In plain English prose, though, their only role is to join independent clauses instead of a coordinating conjunction.
Semicolon separated lists can be, and are, used in normal prose. You could have one in a novel or a newspaper article, and it would not be out of place.
It’s a painful sentence not only because of the misused semicolons.
You force the reader to suffer thru a labored overwritten compound subject consisting of empty overmodified polysyllabic sludge only to be rewarded with the predicate:
“…reflects her persona.”
What the f— does that mean–that your actions suggest something about you? That’s a profound observation.
Are you applying for a position in sociology or “human resource management”?
The only rule I know of for using semicolons in lists is when the list contains clauses that contain commas themselves and the semicolon is used to reduce confusion about which items are part of the list and not.
“On saturdays she preferred making monster cookies, which require oatmeal; banana bread, which requires walnuts; and fudge, which requires neither.”
edit: You can definitely have a semicolon list in the subject, but it will probably feel unwieldy. "Professor Barnes, Podunk University; Professor Haney, University of State; and Professor Kendall, College of St. Saint gave a joint lecture on owl phonology last night.
Jeez, that’s no better than the example in the OP! However, it is easily fixed.
"Professor Barnes (Podunk University), Professor Haney (University of State), and Professor Kendall (College of St. Saint) gave a joint lecture on owl phonology last night.
Even better, use the passive to avoid having such a complex subject.
I fully agree with the comments made here, not just about the semicolons but about the sentence itself. The semicolons are so egregiously wrong that it makes my head hurt to try to read that. And LynnM has well described why the sentence itself is dreadfully ponderous. It manages to be both ostentatious and ineffective at the same time.
It must be said here that there’s nothing intrinsically wrong with complex sentence structures, and indeed a consecutive series of descriptive phrases like that can be quite effective in directing the reader’s attention to the final point that it is all supposed to be making – the climax of the sentence, as it were. But here we have a sequence of hackneyed verbosity that takes the reader nowhere at all. The reader is led expectantly to the end of the sentence where the main point will finally be revealed, and is faced with “…reflect her persona”! It’s a completely meaningless placeholder; it may as well say “…are the things that I thought of to say about her”. Or maybe, in the words of the inimitable Julie Andrews, “…these are a few of my favorite things”!
You may inform your acquaintance that the SDMB consensus is that not only are the semicolons indisputably and egregiously wrong, but she can’t write, either. One wonders if this putative former teacher isn’t borderline illiterate.
But then again, given the prevalence of functional illiteracy in the world, some HR minion will probably read that linguistic abomination, nod sagely, and think “sounds good to me!”
