Semicolons are often misunderstood, much like an angsty teen or the ending of The Sopranos. The semicolon is a useful punctuation mark that allows writers to express their ideas in more meaningful ways. Given its appearance, it should come as no surprise that its usage falls somewhere between a period and a comma.
There are three main ways to use semicolons, the most common of which is to connect two independent sentences that are part of the same thought. Here’s a pair of sentences that could benefit from a semicolon: The blue whale is the largest animal to have ever existed. It’s an aquatic mammal.
Notice that while each sentence has the components of a complete sentence and can exist as an independent thought, the second sentence is quite abrupt. The flow leaves something to be desired. However, if you add a semicolon (The blue whale is the largest animal to have ever existed; it’s an aquatic mammal), the two independent clauses form a more interesting sentence.
There are several do’s and don’ts to follow with semicolons. Never use a capital letter immediately after a semicolon unless the word is a proper noun, and don’t use a conjunction (“and,” “or,” “but,” etc.) either. Do, however, consider adding an adverb to add a bit of flourish to your writing: The blue whale is the largest animal to have ever existed; interestingly, it’s an aquatic mammal. (Proceed with caution, as we shared advice in a recent edition on how to judiciously employ adverbs.)
The second way to use a semicolon is when writing out lists that already include several commas. In the following example, the city/state combos already have commas, so the added semicolons make the overall sentence more clear: My favorite U.S. cities are New Orleans, Louisiana; Los Angeles, California; Denver, Colorado; and Paris, Texas.
A third usage for a semicolon is the cheekiest, as it forms the eyes of the winking emoticon ;). Perhaps these old-school text smileys have been overshadowed by fancier emojis, but I’m holding on to the 🙂 and 😉 as long as I can.
