Fair enough. Can you provide some examples of your semicolon usage which enhance clarity? Not being snarky–I’m genuinely curious.
I used to be heavily addicted to semicolons, but recently I’ve moved on more to em-dashes, which I think are actually even more jarring for most readers.
Hello, totoismomo. So, you’re anti-semic, and you feel strongly about it enough to start this antisemic thread to declare your preference. I’m not offended enough to have a philosophical discussion with you about it. I just can’t get excited about your antisemicism; I don’t care.
My issue with semi-colons is that some asshole put it in the spot where the apostrophe belongs on my keyboard and vice versa. I mean, really, which gets used more?
If you’re a programmer, the semi-colon gets used way more.
From a paper I wrote last spring:
“Authors of news/novels can rely heavily on eye-witness or first-person accounts of historic events and then present those accounts in novel form; alternately, they can fabricate their stories seemingly out of whole cloth with research consisting, at best, of folk tales and second- and third-hand accounts.”
Bear in mind, the paper was graded by a PhD in English, and punctuation always counts. If I’d used the semicolon incorrectly, I’d have been marked down for it. I didn’t and I wasn’t.
I like the semicolon. I don’t always know when to use it and when not to use it, but I think it improves writing when used correctly.
I think part of the reason I like it but am uncertain about when to use it is because it’s a type of stealth punctuation; if it’s used correctly you don’t even notice it. (Just now, when I came to the part of the previous sentence that has a semicolon, I felt like it needed a semicolon; I’m not sure if it did. Augh! I did it again!)
So, uh, after that strange display I just wanted to say that I’m a fan of the semicolon.
I want everyone to know that the use of semicolons in my post about how I don’t know how to use semicolons was entirely unintentional. Or rather I was surprised to find myself using a semicolon on both occasions.
I find that a semicolon is the most appropriate punctuation when I’m writing something half-assed.
I find it useful.
For example, to swipe a sentence from a post:
The sentence could have been constructed as follows:
“I think part of the reason I like it but am uncertain about when to use it is because it’s a type of stealth punctuation. If it’s used correctly you don’t even notice it.”
That choppier writing leaves some doubt as to the reference of the last “it’s”, and that pronoun is just hanging out there on its own. Even an em-dash wouldn’t be quite right, because it suggests some interruption, rather than a continuation of thought.
Not in HTML, PHP or ASP-VBScript. While semicolons are used a lot to end a function, I’d wager that single quotes to delimit strings and attributes are used more often, many times within each function and a minimum of twice per instance. Couple that with the fact the double quote is on the same key and I’ll stand by my statement.