On Semicolons and the Rules of Writing
themillions.com
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The dinner was attended by Ms. A, the President of the Board of Education, Mr. B, the Vice-President, and other dignitaries.
Becomes much clearer when expressed
The dinner was attended by Ms. A, the President of the Board of Education; Mr. B, the Vice-President; and other dignitaries.
and is allowed in this construct though rare. Basically, whenever there is a comma inside a comma-separated term you can turn the higher-level commas into semicolons to indicate this. Makes things super-clear.
As opposed to some sibling comments, which express that bullets should instead be used, I think this offers a good alternative.
Now there is something quite peculiar about that punctuation mark's naming, which has some dissonant trait of causality (what colons are used for), and always found the French name "point-virgule" (period-comma) much more apt.
To me, exclamation mark, full stop and question mark are of equal precedence; they are higher than colon, which is higher than semi-colon, and that is higher than comma.
If you are writing dialogue, then what you wrote is fine. (You can write pretty much whatever you like in dialogue.)
The point is that writing is generally use to express something to the reader, so use whatever tools you have to accomplish that goal.
When they're used to indicate a separate larger than a comma but less than separate sentences, an em-dash works just a well without any of the pretense: from
"My wife would like tea; I would prefer coffee."
to
"My wife would like tea — I would prefer coffee."
And using them to separate list items which themselves contain commas is asking the reader to do too much work to parse things visually, since semicolons are so similar to commas. Literature can use parentheses or em dashes, while technical material can use lists. Observe how much easier all of the following transformations are to parse at a glance:
The people present were Jamie, a man from New Zealand; John, the milkman's son; and George, a gaunt kind of man with no friends.
The people present were Jamie (a man from New Zealand), John (the milkman's son), and George (a gaunt kind of man with no friends).
Several fast food restaurants can be found within the following cities: London, England; Paris, France; Dublin, Ireland; Madrid, Spain.
Several fast food restaurants can be found within the following cities: 1) London, England, 2) Paris, France, 3) Dublin, Ireland, and 4) Madrid, Spain.
Here are three examples of familiar sequences: one, two, and three; a, b, and c; first, second, and third.
Here are three examples of familiar sequences:
- one, two, and three
- a, b, and c
- first, second, and third.
In academic papers you can sometimes wind up having such hierarchies of information and restricted space (e.g. in footnotes) that semicolons become necessary, just like legal documents use § to mark sections... but academic writing and citations has all sorts of conventions of its own.
It is a kind of snobbery to impute pretense to the use of semicolons over dashes; it may simply be that writer’s natural preference or habit to prefer semicolons.
Where does this worrying about coming across as pretentious end?
My natural preference or habit might be to swear all the time, but when I write an HN comment I'd suppress that in order to be taken seriously. Semicolons aren't as strong as swearing, but it's hard to argue they aren't associated with a certain level of pretense in the general public's mind.
I usually think of em dashes as a substitute for parentheses.
There's a different level of contrast, separation, and connection communicated by a semicolon vs. an em dash (not to mention vs. a period or comma or parenthesis). I, for one, am happy to have as wide an array of options as possible considering how central textual communication is to my work and personal life.
The author makes a clear distinction between the semicolon and the em-dash.
> And using them to separate list items which themselves contain commas is asking the reader to do too much work
The article is specifically about prose, and at no point suggest using semicolons for lists, although I think you overstate the difficulty in parsing your first example.
I think that ; is only really handy for delimiting lists: Firstly, I would like to thank the Queen <for>; Secondly, I would like to thank the President <for>; etc.
I think that the name is a bit of a pain: a colon is used for <statement>: <and here is why>. A semi colon is used for lists. However, the name seems to imply some sort of half interval and so people use them as an intermediary between , and .
In business, the tone and style of email is all about affecting power in environments where people pretend there are no rules that would imply accountability. The result is an absurd competition of who can be more brief, less coherent, and affect the ostentatious transfer of the burden of comprehension to the bottom dog.
(Why yes, it was tempting to use the mark in place of those commas. But I prefer the style of putting spaces around the em-dash, and I fear being downvoted into oblivion by any pedants who strongly adhere to the no-space norms. So commas it is.)
The line between how punctuation has evolved (Classic Latin didn't use any punctuation) until modern days and, programming languages syntaxes is indeed very subtle.
I just wrote a thing about it here. [0]
[0] https://twitter.com/leonardofed/status/1018097202017730560
Here's the way I'd have written it:
I sit at the table after dinner and find myself from time to time taking nuts or raisins out of the dish and eating them. My dinner properly is over and in the heat of the conversation I am hardly aware of what I do. But the perception of the fruit and the fleeting notion that I may eat it, seem fatally to bring the act about.
Maybe Perl is like English... TMTOWTDI
I prefer the minimalist style of Strunk:
But modern style definitely tends toward short sentences. With a lot of periods. Even if you create sentence fragments. Sort of Hemingway-esque.
Which does tend to deprecate semi-colons. I enjoyed Eats, Shoots and Leaves. But, as a participant in my company's semi-formal writing style group, I found a lot of the examples contrived and overly complex. As in programming, once you get into trying to figure out the official precedence of operators, you've already lost the game. Rework things so the answer is immediately obvious to people who don't remember whether booleans are computed before exponents.