Chapter 34- The Semicolon

The semicolon is used to connect major sentence elements of equal grammatical rank. You want to use a semicolon between closely related independent clauses not joined with a coordinating conjunction. Those words are: and, but, or, nor, for, so, yet. IF the clauses are closely related and the relation is clear without a conjunction, they may be linked with a semicolon instead. If you want to use a comma it creates a kind of run-on sentence known as comma slice.

Transitional expressions include conjunctive adverbs and transitional phrases. They should not be confused with the coordinating conjunctions and, but, or, nor, for, so and yet, which are preceded by a comma when they link independent clauses.

You don’t want to use a semicolon when you are introducing a list or between a subordinate clause and the rest of the sentence.

I always have a hard time on using semicolons because I don’t ever know if that is where they are suppose to go. After reading this chapter I figured out that in some situations I was using them wrong and do need to fix them around when writing. This chapter was very helpful and I will use it as a reference for future work.