On the finer points of semicolons

December 9, 2015 5:41 AM

Using a semicolon in place of a comma when stringing together lengthy/complex dependent clauses; please advise.

This question keeps coming up for me so I thought I would ask Metafilter (the home of the best grammar on the internet.) This is the sentence I'm struggling with right now: "....build in more opportunities for youth to take on leadership and responsibility—this could include creating opportunities for youth to contribute ideas or take responsibility for part of a group task; creating opportunities for one-on-one peer-to-peer mentoring or teaching; or providing youth with opportunities to lead a group discussion, activity or lesson."

Is this correct semicolon usage? I'm basically just using them in place of commas because of the complexity of the sentence, which I believe is correct based on the usage rules I've seen but I can't shake the feeling that it's wrong. Also, would I need an 'or' at the beginning of the second clause? ("....build in more opportunities for youth to take on leadership and responsibility—this could include creating opportunities for youth to contribute ideas or take responsibility for part of a group task; OR creating opportunities for one-on-one peer-to-peer mentoring or teaching; or providing youth with opportunities to lead a group discussion, activity or lesson.") When I checked rules for semicolon usage it said to use the semicolon in this way I needed a coordinating clause, but it feels clunky to put it there.

posted by geegollygosh to Writing & Language (10 answers total)

The semicolon is correct because you used a comma in the last phrase. If none of the phrases had a comma within them, then using a comma to separate them would suffice.

The or is more subjective. I think if the options were mutually exclusive alternatives, I'd use an or, but if it's just a list of options where one could in fact do all of them, use the and.
posted by Dashy at 5:49 AM on December 9, 2015 [1 favorite]

I do some freelance editing of journal articles. In our style guide, what you have done would be considered correct usage. As far as I know, the substitution of semi-colons for commas in a list of complex clauses is very common usage. You would definitely treat it as a list with an or (or and) preceding the final item on the list, rather than separating each item with an or (or and).
posted by hydropsyche at 5:50 AM on December 9, 2015

Copy editor here. You get my seal of approval for proper semicolon usage. Congrats!
posted by BlahLaLa at 7:01 AM on December 9, 2015

Semicolons look right to me. It might feel less strange if you replace that dash with a colon.

But when I start fussing with things like this, sometimes I re-work the whole sentence.
posted by bluedaisy at 7:09 AM on December 9, 2015 [3 favorites]

Looks good to me. I'd second bluedaisy's rec of colon over dash, though.
posted by thomas j wise at 7:18 AM on December 9, 2015

Agree with the above: grammatically, it's correct, but stylistically, I would replace that em dash after "responsibility" with either a colon or a period.
posted by holborne at 7:25 AM on December 9, 2015 [5 favorites]

The semicolon is correct, but not because of some vague "whoa this is complex" sense. Specifically, you have an embedded list in the last item of your 3-item list of opportunities, and in that situation you can use semicolons to replace the commas separating the items in the higher level list.

As to your second question: no, you certainly don't need "or" at the beginning of the second item in the top-level list, and while I don't think it's strictly ungrammatical I wouldn't use one. Similarly, I don't think it's strictly ungrammatical to say "Do you want ham or bacon or sausage?" but it's a bit extraneous. Most people would write "Do you want ham, bacon, or sausage?" unless they're godless serial comma killers.

Finally, I agree with holborne that you should take out the dash. My suggestion is to just start a fresh sentence, provided that whatever proceeds can stand on its own as a complete sentence.
posted by drlith at 9:52 AM on December 9, 2015 [1 favorite]

Also a copy editor. As already stated, your semicolon usage is fine. I wouldn't replace the dash with a colon though. I'd start a new sentence.
posted by FencingGal at 5:39 PM on December 9, 2015

Agreed with FencingGal (I've taught English writing and grammar for 13 years).
posted by Joseph Gurl at 9:04 PM on December 9, 2015

It's technically correct but awkward. It seems a bit too wordy and repetitious to me:

"....build in more opportunities for youth to take on leadership and responsibility—this could include creating opportunities for youth to contribute ideas or take responsibility for part of a group task; creating opportunities for one-on-one peer-to-peer mentoring or teaching; or providing youth with opportunities to lead a group discussion, activity or lesson."

How about:

"...build in more opportunities for youth to take on leadership and responsibility. These opportunities could include peer-to-peer mentoring or leading a group discussion, activity, or lesson."
posted by Violet Hour at 10:36 PM on December 9, 2015