Clauses and Semi-Colon.

Question

Just a quick question everyone. I never understood clauses and why they would be used. If anyone can shed light on this, I'd truly appreciate it. Below, I will give an example.

Michael Jordan is a great athlete; he has won several championships.

My question is...why would that be used? I've seen sentence structures on this on various articles I read. I don't use it myself because I don't know how to use it

Cheers

Clive · Accepted Answer

Hi,

Welcome to the Forum.

Just a quick question everyone. I never understood clauses and why they would be used. If anyone can shed light on this, I'd truly appreciate it. Below, I will give an example.

Michael Jordan is a great athlete; he has won several championships.

My question is...why would that be used? I've seen sentence structures on this on various articles I read. I don't use it myself because I don't know how to use it

I assume that you are asking about the use of a semi-colon to link two main clauses. You could write it as two separate sentences ie Michael Jordan is a great athlete. He has won several championships. However, if you feel that there is a very close and special relationship between the two clauses, you can replace the period with a semi-colon. Another way to think of this is to say that you want a shorter pause than a period represents.

Generally speaking, my suggestion is to do this only where your clauses are not only closely related but also important or dramatic or stylish in some way. eg He loved her; she died. but not He went to the store; he bought milk.

Another simple tip is not to use a lot of semi-colons. If your writing is full of them, you are using too many.

If you search the Forum for 'semi-colon', you will find plenty of threads that discuss this.

Best wishes, Clive

ChoosingToBe · Answer

Thank you very much Clive for the information. I'll take a look around the forums <img class='emoticon' style='Width:19px;Height:19px;' data-delaysrc='https://uat-englishforward-forums-backend.s3.us-west-2.amazonaws.com/Emoticons/1.gif' src='https://uat-englishforward-forums-backend.s3.us-west-2.amazonaws.com/Emoticons/1.gif' alt='Emotion: smile'/>

Clauses and Semi-Colon.

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