Member-only story
Worst Writing Advice: Semicolons — Are They Even Legal?
I had planned on talking about semicolons in the same post as contractions, but when I started typing, I realized I had too much material for one post, and each piece of bad advice deserved its own spotlight, such as it is.
So without further ado, I bring you [insert your own musical soundtrack of dread here]
SEMICOLONS
The semicolon is a piece of punctuation that brings out strong emotions in people. I have never met anyone who feels ambivalent about them — either they love semicolons or they hate them with every fiber of their being.
Of those who hate the semicolon, the numbers seem to fall into two camps: the I-Don’t-Know-How-to-Use-Them-Properly people and the Semicolons-Are-Forbidden people.
I get that some people may not know how to use them.
Punctuation can be a tricky thing at times, and a punctuation mark that isn’t really a full stop but isn’t really a comma can get mighty confusing. Not knowing is perfectly fine, and provides job security to editors all over the globe. Semicolonially inept (semicolonically? nope) writers give me one more way to show how I can help to polish their work. And if I had to make up a statistic on the spot, I’d say that easily 70% of the writers…
