Punctuation
- Capital Letters
- Full Stops
- Commas
- Semicolons
- Colons
- Ellipsis
Semicolons
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It is almost always a greater pleasure to come across a semicolon than a period. …You get a pleasant little feeling of expectancy; there is more to come; read on; it will get clearer. |
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—George F. Will |
The semicolon ( ; ) is sometimes used to create the effect of signalling that there is more to come, as stated in the above quote. It also creates emphasis for the sentence element that follows. Here is a list of its correct usage:
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to indicate the boundary of independent clauses that are not joined by the conjunctions and, but, for, nor, or, so and yet (c.f. Commas); |
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for separating items in a series when the items contain commas themselves; |
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to introduce an elaboration of the preceding element and to create an emphatic effect. |
