November 25th 2023.
The semicolon is a mysterious punctuation mark that is often overlooked by modern writers in favour of periodic sentences. Nevertheless, it can be a powerful tool in the hands of a talented author. The semicolon allows two sentences to be joined into one, when the two ideas are too closely related to be separated by a full stop.
For example, take Percy Bysshe Shelley's quote: "The Devil, in the form of a snake, persuaded them to eat of this fruit; in consequence of which God condemned them and their posterity yet unborn, to satisfy his justice by their eternal misery". The semicolon here has been used to properly join the two sentences without resorting to conjunctions such as "but" or "and", which would have made the sentence look unappealing.
Charles Dickens also demonstrated the power of the semicolon in his novel A Tale of Two Cities, writing: “It was the best of times; it was worst of times; it was the age of wisdom; it was age of foolishness; it was the epoch of belief; it was the epoch of incredulity; it was season of light; it was season of darkness; it was the spring of hope; it was the winter of despair.” Here it is clear that the conjunctions would have scattered the thoughts, and the semicolon has been used to keep them all together in one thought.
The semicolon is also used when there is no connecting word which would require a comma, such as "and" or "but". Ernest Hemingway's Green Hills of Africa is a great example of this: "I do not like to ask questions, and where I was brought up it was not polite". Had the author chosen to use a comma here, the sentence would not have flowed as nicely: "I do now like to ask questions; where I was brought up it was not polite".
Finally, the semicolon is used when special conditions requiring a colon are absent, such as in the Penguin Guide to Punctuation: "A semicolon can always, in principle, be replaced either by a full stop or by the word and". Dickens' quote has shown us how to join ideas with the semicolon, and is a great example of how it can be used to create vivid, flowing sentences.
In conclusion, the semicolon is a powerful tool that can be used to join two related ideas into one sentence. It is often overlooked by modern writers, but can be an effective way to create interesting and vivid pieces of writing.
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