Don't Fear the Semicolon

I had planned on some sort of "Don't Fear the Reaper" reference but there's just no way to do that with three syllables, and even my Ridiculous Runaway Metaphors engines ran out of the energy required for something that monumentally stupid sometime during Wednesday afternoon.  The point remains the same, though; people are really weird about semicolons - I've actually read grammar books advising you to just avoid them!  And that, my friends, is crap of the highest degree.

Worse yet, it's insulting crap.  The theory, so far as I can tell, basically runs on the assumption that most people are such intellectual boobs they can't figure out any punctuation more advanced than a comma, and even that's iffy.  Going purely on circumstantial evidence, I can see where this idea arises; my college courses thronged with people - English majors, even! - who punctuated via grapeshot.  Hm, I have put down a bunch of words, now I shall randomly pepper it with little dots and squiggles!  Conversely, one guy in my Advanced Creative Writing course (...) who, in accordance with his decision that punctuation is for suckers and capitalization too tricky to remember, handed me a short story that might have been written by e e cummings after a few too many whiskeys.

Teachers apparently drill it into kids' heads pretty early on that run-on sentences should be avoided at all costs*.  This is true, and great, and I wish it stuck better because I've seen some godawful run-ons in university upperclassmen's work.  However, it would be even greater if these lessons included at very least the difference between a run-on sentence and a long or complicated, but properly constructed, one.

"Constructed" is the key word here.  Sentences, like architecture, fall apart if thrown together pell-mell; you must craft them, words chosen carefully like bricks, with cohesion serving as mortar to prevent a pile of rubble. A phrase is the shortest cohesive combination of words and can, in fact, serve as a full sentence, just as, let's say, a wall can be a useful construction all on its own.  It's just building materials arranged coherently in a line, with a beginning and end - a capital letter at the start and a period, question mark or exclamation point at the end.

You can't build a house out of walls alone, though; you've got to have, at the very least, a ceiling and a door.  This is where other forms of punctuation come in.    Most basic, of course, is the comma.  That's the ceiling and the door.  Then there's the dash and the ellipsis - which is, incidentally, three periods, not two or four.  Let's say the dash is a window; it works to open up the sentence and make it more interesting but if you put in too many the structure falls apart.  The ellipsis, on the other hand, is...I don't know enough about architecture to say, honestly, but it's something you need to use even less than the dash.  It's a pretty casual piece of punctuation and, save in citations, has little to no place in formal writing, and only a small niche even in more conversational styles like mine.

And then there's the semicolon.  That's an archway.  It looks trickier than it is, it gets old if used constantly, and it's immensely versatile.  Having a favourite punctuation mark definitely marks me as a weirdo, but I'll own to that, and proudly, and I will hereby announce that the semicolon is, in fact, hands-down my favourite punctuation mark.  I think in complicated sentences and thus rely heavily on punctuation and, holy crap, it comes in so handy!   One of the greatest tragedies of my early 20s came to pass when I realized that the cell phone I got to replace my poor, faithful Razr after my traitorous butt destroyed it (don't sit on a cell phone, mmmkay?) didn't have a semicolon.  Anywhere.  At all.  I still shudder at the memory.

Back to the semicolon itself!  What it is, basically, is a divider; stronger than a comma, less definitive than a period.  You can use it to present separate but related ideas, such as the previous, or to chop up a list wherein some of the items involve multiple words, thence making commas confusing.  Do you need a red, white and blue flag, garters, and a toad, as in a flag, garters, and toad all of which are red, white, and blue? Or do you need a red, white and blue flag; garters; and a toad?

Please note you don't use it to start a list.  If you're using punctuation to start a list, usually in a fairly formal setting, use a colon.  I'll talk about colons another time.  The punctuation kind, not the intestine kind. 

In conclusion, though, semicolons aren't scary.  They're useful and versatile and can, used in moderation, make your writing more interesting. 

*Like passive voice, save that, as above, passive voice actually does have its place, whereas, save in dialogue, run-on sentences really are verboten.