What on earth is a semicolon?

; ← this thing. But also:

Once, a friend and I had a conversation that veered into our favourite punctuation symbol. My answer was immediate: the semicolon. Generic favourite choice to be sure, but it’s so versatile and elegant that I can’t help it. 

So how exactly does one use it?

At its simplest, a semicolon is used to link two independent clauses (i.e. able to function as standalone sentences) together. If both of your two halves are complete sentences on their own, they have to be linked with a semicolon (and not a comma, unless it’s followed by a conjunction)!

The fan is off; I’m a bit too warm.

But that doesn’t mean you can use semicolons for any two sentences. While in strict grammatical terms you can, cadence-related or semantic reasons obviously stave one off from using it at every opportunity.

Semantic & Cadence-Related Reasons

By linking two sentences together, semicolons also link the respective ideas, presenting them as parts to a composite whole idea instead of two disparate thoughts. Take the previous example, and see what changes when we separate the two clauses:

The fan is off. I’m a bit too warm.

This risks not clearly linking the speaker feeling warm to the fan being off, presenting them instead as two separate observations. This is especially if it’s followed by more standard sentences of description that exacerbate the subconscious notion that each sentence conveys a different idea. To be clear, readers will probably notice the cause-and-effect presented here; it’s just a bit less automatic.

Hey, let’s use that previous sentence as an example:

Readers will probably notice the cause-and-effect; it’s just a bit less automatic.

Why not ‘... cause-and-effect, though it’s just a bit less automatic’? Personally, that phrasing feels more clunky and needlessly dense, especially coming off the hyphenated four-syllable ‘cause-and-effect’, at which point the reader could use a half-second of pause. But I still didn’t want to lose the connection between the two ideas, so the semicolon was perfect.

Ease of Reading

Consider your average list where the items are separated by commas. What happens if your list contains items that already have commas inside e.g. city names (Paris, France) or just supplementary information (e.g. Smith, a librarian)?

Semicolons are sort of one step up from commas in the sentence-pause punctuation hierarchy. Since commas are already being used in the items, we need something more powerful to separate them, which is why we’d use semicolons to write:

He met a lot of people at the party: Smith, a librarian; James, a beekeeper; Lydia, a graphic designer.

It also keeps the cadence neat and tidy by providing breaks between items that are longer than the breaks between info chunks within the item. 

Creative Uses

Obviously in creative writing endeavours, rules are made to be broken, and semicolons become moreso a tool for pause: they provide a beat of hesitation without breaking off entirely, and can help the reader get through long & dense sentences (if that happens to be your writing style). 

The pause a semicolon creates is different from that of a hyphen: hyphens’ silences are more wavering, irresolute, as if the speaker is thinking of what comes after the hyphen in real-time. A semicolon is emotionally neutral. 

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The semicolon: oft-misunderstood, even-more-oft-ignored. It’s not just the thing that lets you draw the crying face ;-; - I’ve never seen its resemblance, but I digress. 

Also I just think it’s cool.