:smack:
I have noticed that I have a bit of a tendency toward comma splices, especially in my posts here, but, although I accept that they are best avoided, I am not convinced that they are all that terrible a sin. Comma splices rarely give rise to any ambiguity (certainly not in this case), usually read smoothly enough, and, all in all, I do not really see that the rule against them is very much better motivated than such pointless rules as the one against splitting infinitives, or ending a sentence with a proposition. I am certainly not convinced that my sentence would have been improved by having a showy semicolon tripping you up in the middle of it, although I suppose it would have been more “correct”, if no more understandable, if it had been split into two sentences.
FWIW, I agree. A comma splice is the mildest of errors if it can even be considered an “error” at all in very casual usage. As opposed to the case cited in the OP, which makes my head hurt somewhat as if it had been struck by the Linguistic Mallet of Stupid.
Another place where the serial semicolon is useful is with city names. Consider: “I have relatives living in New York; Gary, Indiana; and Portland, Oregon.”. Replace the semicolons with commas, and that sentence becomes much more confusing. And I could have made it even worse, by using places like Indiana, Pennsylvania.
I welcome comma splices, especially if it makes parsing the sentence that much easier to digest. I personally like to keep semicolon usage to an absolute minimum, so I typically use comma splices instead.
Tell your friend that I’m a teacher, too, and optionally add that I have a reputation as a radical descriptivist, and that I think her use of semicolons is totally wrong, wrong, wrong.
Here is one tutorial.
http://theoatmeal.com/comics/semicolon
I agree that the OP’s friend’s sentence is awful, and I am wondering if this reference was used as is, discarded or corrected.
Besides everything stated above, isn’t it a cardinal sin to follow a semicolon with an conjunction?
“extra-curricular leadership roles; and her specific career objectives”
Just break it into another sentence. Comma splices tend to drive me crazy. I’m pretty liberal grammatically, but those drive me nuts for some reason. My brain tends to hiccup on them, slowing down my comprehension. Put a period where the comma splice is, and I’m golden.
In regards to the OP, I am with the consensus. It’s just a terrible sentence all around, even without the erroneous (or “non-standard,” if we’re being charitable) usage of the semicolons.