Using a semicolon in a list

[ITR_champion]

At some point during elementary school, we all learn that when we’re writing out a list of items in the English language, we seperate the items with commas. Some people also learn that it’s okay to replace the commas with semicolons in certain circumstances, in order to aovid confusion. For instance, if the items to be seperated are phrases or clauses that contain commas, you may use semicolons to keep things clear.

Now consider this example:

@Cecil

He believed living cells arose spontaneously from inorganic matter; that cancer cells are actually protozoa-like critters that have tails and can swim like fish; and that orgone energy is what makes the sky blue and causes heat shimmer.

He seperates the cluases with semicolons, despite the fact that those clauses don’t contain any commas. Is this correct?

[mrunlucky]

I’m just going to quote a point from CMS for you:

“If the clauses of a compound sentence are very long or are themselves subdivided by commas, a semicolon may be used between them even if they are joined by a conjunction.”

The clauses in the example you’ve given, could easily be separate sentences. Since each clause is coordinate, and since each could start with “He believed”, for the sake of simplicity they can just be grouped into one sentence.