{"id":156,"date":"2008-04-05T15:43:19","date_gmt":"2008-04-05T14:43:19","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.blogistan.co.uk\/ijwp\/mt.php\/2008\/04\/05\/what_use_is_the_semicolon"},"modified":"2025-10-09T19:31:19","modified_gmt":"2025-10-09T18:31:19","slug":"what_use_is_the_semicolon","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.blogistan.co.uk\/blog\/mt.php\/2008\/04\/05\/what_use_is_the_semicolon","title":{"rendered":"What use is the semicolon?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Apparently, according to some French writers, not much &#8211; according to <a href=\"http:\/\/www.guardian.co.uk\/world\/2008\/apr\/04\/france.britishidentity\">this article<\/a>, very few modern French writers use it, and the decline in its use is due to the invasion of British usages which are &quot;too direct&quot; to make use of the supposed subtlety of the semicolon.  The only problem is that many English writers themselves make use of it &#8211; having just gone over my own main page I find several of them.<\/p>\n<p>How is the semicolon too subtle for English, then?  The purpose of it is to demonstrate a connection between one phrase and another, both of which qualify as sentences in themselves, that is stronger than that between two separate sentences.  Perhaps that&#39;s subtle, but not too subtle that it&#39;s beyond the reach of anyone who wants to be a serious writer to understand, when it really is a very useful, even important, piece of grammar?<\/p>\n<p>I&#39;ve long been pretty conservative when it comes to matters of the English language (as <a href=\"https:\/\/www.blogistan.co.uk\/blog\/mt.php\/2005\/06\/21\/dumbing_down_english_grammar\">here<\/a>), but I find the attitude of some of those quoted as being against it, both French and English-speaking, rather off-putting.  If people don&#39;t find it useful in their writing, they are quite at liberty not to use it, but they should not dismiss it as reflecting &quot;a fuzziness of thought&quot; or just that you&#39;ve been to college.  (Actually, I&#39;m pretty sure I used them before I went to college, but I do remember asking my teacher about semicolons when I was 7 or 8 and being told we did not use them in that year.)  Do people really hate their English or French teachers that much that they deprive themselves of a way of expressing themselves in writing, let alone want to deprive others?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Apparently, according to some French writers, not much &#8211; according to this article, very few modern French writers use it, and the decline in its use is due to the invasion of British usages&#46;&#46;&#46;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[47],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-156","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-language"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p17bgV-2w","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.blogistan.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/156","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.blogistan.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.blogistan.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.blogistan.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.blogistan.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=156"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.blogistan.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/156\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":41865,"href":"https:\/\/www.blogistan.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/156\/revisions\/41865"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.blogistan.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=156"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.blogistan.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=156"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.blogistan.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=156"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}