When you’re learning to type, the first lesson is the home-row position — the keys where your fingers rest: a s d f j k l ;. Learning this, you might naturally assume that the semicolon is pretty ...

Here’s a fun thing you can do with your writing: Take any two simple, clear sentences and use a semicolon to mush them into one. For example, imagine you have a paragraph with just two sentences. “The ...

A recent study has found a 50 per cent decline in the use of semicolons over the last two decades. The decline accelerates a longterm trend: In 1781, British literature featured a semicolon roughly ...

It begins with a squinting of the eyes. Hm. A semicolon. You approach it with caution. Ok, I can do this. One dot, plus a comma. There. No, wait. That doesn’t look quite right. The questions begin: ...

Happy National Punctuation Day, Internet! To celebrate, we've prepared a guide to the most hated punctuation mark of all: the semicolon. Although you won't need it often, it can add essential clarity ...

Writers and editors don’t always agree; really, they don’t. There was a time, years ago, when I was an editor at the now defunct Times-Union that I made some changes — necessary, I’m sure — to a story ...

The most common way to use a semicolon is to help join closely connected ideas in a sentence. These sections must be independent and complete sentences, but closely linked in some way: ‘Sandip spent ...

2) On a long car ride—if you’re not insane, this works best with another player—amuse each other by only speaking in sentences that involve two clauses, independent but related, that could conceivably ...

If you use the wrong one, you can always claim it was a typo. | Dominique James/iStock via Getty Images Plus Despite what its name suggests, a semicolon isn’t exactly just half a colon—it has its own ...

Of all the punctuation marks, the semicolon is far from the most popular. It's fallen in usage since it's heyday in the 1800s. Why was it so big then, and what changed? It might be that folks today ...