Are semicolons frowned upon stylistically?

June 2, 2004 2:38 PM

I find that I use a lot of semicolons when I write. Is this okay, or frowned upon stylistically? Strunk & White don't say much about the subject; they recommend semicolons when needed to replace awkward commas and the words while and though. ("Connecticut has a long shoreline; Wyoming is entirely land-locked.") FWIW, my writing pretty much entirely consists of legal memos and blogging.

And yes, that was sort of intentional.

posted by PrinceValium to Writing & Language (37 answers total)

Not enough folks use semi-colons; go ahead and use them is my advice.

(I use a lot of them, too.)
posted by eilatan at 3:00 PM on June 2, 2004

I like semicolons and I use them when I can, which isn't often.
posted by linux at 3:01 PM on June 2, 2004

Try dropping some semicolons in favor of more sentences. That is, "Strunk and White don't say much about the subject. They recommend semicolons when needed...".

Then see which you like better. If you're writing to convince people that your side is right, more and simpler sentences might be preferable to complex sentence structure. Or might not.
posted by ROU_Xenophobe at 3:01 PM on June 2, 2004

Over-reliance on any device is frowned upon stylistically. But as long as you're using them correctly, your excessive semicolons aren't a big deal. Some people might consider them stuffy and pretentious.
posted by jjg at 3:03 PM on June 2, 2004

I do the same thing, Prince; semicolons come to me almost as naturally as periods and question marks, and I've often wondered if I should be using them as much as I do. To expand on Strunk and White's guidelines, semicolons separate independent, closely related clauses in a complex sentence. More here. Don't get too enamored of semicolons, though; as ROU says above, they can get intimidating.
posted by brownpau at 3:03 PM on June 2, 2004

A university English prof once told our class that we should just avoid use of semicolons in our writing, and his reasoning for this was that we just didn't know how to use it properly (you might think that this would have been the ideal time to teach us...).

Instead he insisted that when we felt like using a semicolon we should use a dash. So, using your example, "Connecticut has a long shoreline - Wyoming is entirely land-locked." I've done it numerous times on essays since and nobody has seemed to have a problem with it.
posted by Monster_Zero at 3:03 PM on June 2, 2004

I tend to use dashes instead of semicolons, too -- semicolons are ugly.
posted by reklaw at 3:29 PM on June 2, 2004

Monster_Zero, that teacher is an idiot.

By the way, aren't you supposed to make the word after ; Capitalized?
posted by Keyser Soze at 3:32 PM on June 2, 2004

I heard a grammarian on NPR recently who said that a colon specifies a strong connection between the two clauses in a sentence, a kind of "promise' that something meaningful to the part before a colon is coming after it. EG:

"James Bond's goose was cooked: the lackey had loosed the sharks."

She said that a semicolon was much the same thing, but the connection implied was not necessarily as strong. It still should be there, but it's a looser device. EG:

"James Bond looked up ruefully; the rain came down in sheets."

She didn't like dashes, since they can be used for parentheticals or for separating independent clauses, but whatever the case, their usage isn't as well-defined and they're frequently tossed in - just for the hell of it. I tend to agree.

If you feel you're overusing semi-colons, it's probably because most people don't use them at all. That's because they don't understand them. This doesn't make you wrong. Just be sure you review the proper usages and stick to them. Strunk & White should do the trick.
posted by scarabic at 3:32 PM on June 2, 2004

I am positively addicted to dashes -- they just seem to say what I need to. Maybe I'm subconsciously trying to get more power out of my writing or something.
posted by goethean at 3:40 PM on June 2, 2004

I would have thought that semicolons would be verboten in legal writing. If you need to disambiguate nested lists, you should do so clearly with numbering, which then also lets you refer to list items clearly. Semicolons, and all other forms where phrases are conjoined by mere apposition, foment ambiguity. Doesn't legalese depend on sturdy "ands" and "ors"?

On the other hand, semicolons are a lovely way of conveying cadence in writing. To me, they provide a wee caesura; something less than a full stop but more than a comma's worth of pause.
posted by i_am_joe's_spleen at 3:49 PM on June 2, 2004

In fact, semicolons lend a sentence such an air of distinction, don't you think?
posted by i_am_joe's_spleen at 3:50 PM on June 2, 2004

I have to force myself to use semicolons instead of dashes sometimes. Nothing I love like dashes. Half of my proofreading/revision process is reworking sentences without the dashes.

That is to say, I use semicolons typically as I would dashes -- to express a medium-length pause or connect two thoughts that don't warrant whole sentences of their own.
posted by rafter at 3:52 PM on June 2, 2004

Rafter : unless you're using a semicolon to set off a list that would otherwise be confusing with commas alone, the two clauses of the sentence linked by a semicolon must be able to stand alone as complete sentences. In other words, semicolons are always interchangeable with periods; sometimes they are interchangeable with dashes or colons, but not always. As the Chicago Manual of Style (15th ed.) puts it:

[Semicolons] should always be used between the two parts of a compound sentence (independent, or coordinate, clauses) when they are not connected by a conjunction: "The controversial portrait had been removed from the entrance hall; in its place had been hung a realistic landscape." Coordinate clauses may, of course, be separated into individual sentences.

They have several more rules about the use of conjunctions and adverbs in relation to the semicolon, but that's the general spirit of its usage.

PrinceValium: I too used to be addicted to the wily semicolon; I feel it's elegant and implies a shade of meaning that's not conveyed by simply breaking everything into two sentences. However, I found that I did overuse it for several years (a stylistic hangover of grad school, I think) -- I tended to create endless compound-complex sentences one right after the other, which wound up diluted the intended effect. I've tried in recent years to cut down on my semicolon use, which has resulted in writing with more variance to its rhythm.
posted by scody at 4:34 PM on June 2, 2004

whoops, I actually quoted from the 14th ed. of Chicago. Which is just as well, because I'm not too fond of the 15th ed. overall. [/obsessive-compulsive editor]
posted by scody at 4:39 PM on June 2, 2004

I feel it's elegant and implies a shade of meaning that's not conveyed by simply breaking everything into two sentences

I don't disagree, but it seemed to (nonlegal) me that legal writing might benefit from simple clarity over shades of meaning. There's no shade -- they're wrong wrong wrong, and I'm right right right.

I run into similar concerns with my own academic (poli-sci) writing, trying to tame my tendency to construct big, complex sentences that point to different things, all because they share a common thought <-- sentences like that. Usually I end up replacing the ones I catch with a couple of simple declarative sentences, and the editors find more and tell me to fix them. Or just say "Cut out a third of this paper, but don't take anything important out," and to my embarrassment, I can.
posted by ROU_Xenophobe at 4:45 PM on June 2, 2004

ROU_Xenophobe, when I have to I can muster a much more direct and coherent prose style than you see here. I've helped many people with academic writing. When they have tied themselves in synactic knots, I put on my stupid face and ask: "what are you trying to say here?" Almost always, they reply with something plain and understandable. Then I tell them to write that down instead.

Returning to the subject at hand, semicolons are like a lot of nice touches in any medium. Too many spoil the overall effect, because they become obvious, like a tic; meanwhile, they themselves lose their special quality. If you always use a semicolon where a comma will do, then what you have is simply an ersatz comma.
posted by i_am_joe's_spleen at 4:57 PM on June 2, 2004

I'm fifty-fifty on dashes over semicolons. I think semicolons look pretty; a double-dash doesn't have that same stylistic flair.

Now that I'm aware of the semicolon in the above sentence, though, it does look a bit wrong -- maybe dashes are more forgiving.
posted by tracicle at 5:11 PM on June 2, 2004

Pet peeve: the double dash. There is only one true dash—the em-dash! Now if only I could get the spacing around it right…

(Kudos to Matt for round-tripping entities nicely).
posted by i_am_joe's_spleen at 5:33 PM on June 2, 2004

The semicolon is perfect; perfect for making winking faces.

"Eats Shoots and Leaves" seemed to explain semicolons quite well. For me, I remember it as the semicolon separates the "punchline" from the "joke."
posted by drezdn at 6:16 PM on June 2, 2004

Shouldn't that be a colon, drezdn? The second clause isn't a sentence.

To the original question: Writing with semi-colons makes you sound breathless.
posted by smackfu at 7:15 PM on June 2, 2004

Keyser: no.
posted by DevilsAdvocate at 7:54 PM on June 2, 2004

I've got nothing to add to the semicolon conversation, other than that I love them, and if you're happy with your usage, then you should continue writing as you have been. But, since scody brought up a quibble about the 15th vs. the 14th edition of the Chicago Manual of Style, and since we're being worrysome about grammar and punctuation, I wanted to provide a link to Louis Menand's review of the 15th edition of the Chicago Manual of Style, just because it's definitely my favorite book review ever.
posted by .kobayashi. at 8:23 PM on June 2, 2004

Semicolons rule; that is my opinion.
posted by TedW at 9:06 PM on June 2, 2004

I stand: corrected.
posted by drezdn at 9:59 PM on June 2, 2004

Dashes are pretty much useless except in morse code and poetry.
posted by bingo at 10:36 PM on June 2, 2004

I disagree -- when I'm reading, a dash seems like the perfect conversational pause, as if someone was actually speaking to me. A semicolon is too...semi-formal. Too big a pause. Writers like John Irving and Larry McMurtry use dashes a lot, and it works well -- their styles are very conversational and readable.
posted by gottabefunky at 10:47 PM on June 2, 2004

Dashes have a certain feeling that other marks can't quite convey.
posted by drezdn at 11:18 PM on June 2, 2004

Personally, I like them; others are of a different opinion:

I realize that some of you may have come in hopes of hearing tips on how to become a professional writer. I say to you, "If you really want to hurt your parents, and you don't have the nerve to be a homosexual, the least you can do is go into the arts. But do not use semicolons. They are transvestite hermaphrodites, standing for absolutely nothing. All they do is show you've been to college." Kurt Vonnegut, found here
posted by Quinbus Flestrin at 11:50 PM on June 2, 2004

*went to college; didn't graduate*
posted by tracicle at 1:18 AM on June 3, 2004

It's true, Vonnegut doesn't use semicolons, and he's been able to limp along pretty well without them. But this is a big part of his sort of informal, declarative staccato style, often used to punch up the irony of certain statements. Look at the quote below, for example:

If a male comes home from a war, especially with serious wounds, everybody agrees: Here indeed is a man. When I came home to Indianapolis from the Second World War in Germany, an uncle of mine said to me, ``By golly -- you look like a man now.'' I wanted to strangle him. If I had, he would have been the first German I'd killed.

A semicolon would feel perfectly at home between the last two sentences, and is perhaps a better choice. But Vonnegut's full stops often act like the comedian's critical pause between the build-up and the punchline, and are a part of his art. So, I think a lot of what determines whether the semicolons should be let loose (beyond what is proper grammatically) is the "voice" that you want to employ. Much of the backlash against semicolons probably has to do with the fact that a lot of people seem to gerrymander their sentences so as to include them.
posted by taz at 4:30 AM on June 3, 2004

semicolons are a lovely way of conveying cadence in writing

Punctuation itself is all about conveying cadence in writing. There's nothing wrong with semi-colons; if someone is intimidated by them, I'd rather they get a little therapy than dumb-down my writing to a moronic level. Semi-colons are slight pauses—but dashes—theyare breathless and convey, "ohmigodcanyoubelieveit?getreadyformore!"

Eats, Shoots & Leaves is an amusing grammar-theory book; however, I've found The Transitive Vampire: A Handbook of Grammar for the Innocent, the Eager and the Doomed to be more useful in practice.
posted by mimi at 7:21 AM on June 3, 2004

All of you that are using dashes, please take a moment to read A List Apart's The Trouble With EM 'n EN—especially the section entitled "The correct use of em and en". They're a wonderful textual tool; do take the time to use and encode them properly. Nothing is more grating than a double-hyphen popping up in the middle of your sentence.

Also, semicolons rock, and have long been a part of my normal regular writing style. Just like any other piece of punctuation, though, be sure not to overuse them!!!!!!!!
posted by DrJohnEvans at 7:24 AM on June 3, 2004

I tend to think of semicolons as a breath after which you might expand on the pre-semicolon part of the sentence. For example I'd think that "Strunk & White don't say much about the subject; they recommend semicolons when needed…" would be a good use of it, while "Connecticut has a long shoreline; Wyoming is entirely land-locked" would not be, since you're setting up a contrast. I would probably use a "but" or "and" in that case. I'm not talking about rightness or wrongness; I'm just saying how I would use it stylistically.
posted by transient at 7:57 AM on June 3, 2004

I didn't mean to suggest that semicolons should be used instead of dashes; they have different purposes. And I concede that within dialog, a dash can be a good way of representing a pause.

And I used semicolons in high school; thank you very much.
posted by bingo at 8:03 AM on June 3, 2004

Correcting my link to The Transitive Vampire!
posted by mimi at 8:38 AM on June 3, 2004

Semicolons are perfectly fine; I too use them a lot, and I make no apologies for it. Like anything, they can be overdone. But le style, c'est l'homme même [your style is you], and if that's your style, there's no sense trying to put on a mask. Wear your semis with pride!
posted by languagehat at 5:17 PM on June 3, 2004